The purpose of society is not to preserve and populate the forms of social life and industry. That can be done with a fraction of the population, and if necessary, within a context of near-absolute injustice and corruption, especially when social connections are mediated by technology.
The purpose of society is the answer to a single question: What is it that all of us should do now?
I remember reading Newman's Lectures on the Irish University when I was working at the hardware store on the Upper East Side, just after passing the bar exam. That, and Trollope, preserved some airy spaces in the mind during the hardscrabble days. Which were, of course, shortly to become even more hardscrabble.
Hardscrabbler. Harderscrabble. It's very important to find the right words for things. Cf. I. Berlin's anecdote about Akmatova in the bread line.
Looking at a map of the region in the 11th c. -- with possibly one exception, all of the places that I've visited were cities then. (And I think the one not on the map was in existence then, as well.) Not always under the same names, or in the same country, but still there. Perhaps the norm in Europe.
I have consciously looked for cities that were historical capitals or sees, sometimes in preference to current capitals. The ruins of time...
From the first draft of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, per today's entry in Chambers:
The thoughtless World to majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave, and idolise success;
But more to Innocence their safety owe
Than Power and Genius e'er conspired to bless.
And thou who, mindful of the unhonoured Dead,
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate,
By night and lonely contemplation led
To linger in the lonely walks of Fate,
Hark how the sacred calm that reigns around
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease;
Instill small accents whisp'ring from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.
No more with Reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool, sequester'd vale of life
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom
Proverbs for Paranoiacs, cont'd: If you are travelling in the Second World, and a large commercial van with dark tinted windows that was outside the apartment yesterday pulls up again the next morning, and then pulls away again a few minutes after you put some towels out to dry in front of the window, it's undoubtedly a coincidence. If anyone's asking.
[Update, apparently just a van in the local commercial traffic that decided to make an abrupt departure at that particular moment. But in the Balkans, any excuse for paranoia is useful. Keeps one on one's toes.]
Rather profound shift in powers of mental focus (not for the good), together with mild respiratory oddness. Assuming it's from the rooms above the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which were quite a shift from the quiet, somewhat swampy city of the Jedi Council. The paradigm for it in my understanding is the beginning of Tarkofski's Solaris -- the earthly home (which we see in the director's ending to be the world of forms), and then this deeply disturbing soundtrack of automobiles and traffic counterbalanced by sedative visuals. From the place of understanding to the difficult work and alienating journey.
Given the preponderance of the visual in experiencing films, people often take the traffic section to be simply soporific and sedative -- but if you listen to the audio on its own, it's actually deeply disturbing.
Walkure on the Bayreuth broadcast for the Sunday late afternoon/evening. Rheingold was in the Starbucks across from the national parliament, which went from daytime to nighttime lighting at the finish, which was quite powerful. But for the first day of the festival, the rooms adjacent to the busy road. Sufficient for the wanderer.
In this listening, I'm seeing Wotan as a sort of protestant figure. (Much to do with the reading of the past year, perhaps.) Building Valhalla against the ones who have gained spiritual power by renouncing earthly love. Walhall seems a more contingent proposition -- not a universal heaven, but a collection of the noble souls that Wotan's Valkyries are able to capture (St. Michael figures, perhaps) after Wotan had intentionally made the mortals' lives difficult and quarrelsome. Built by the human giants, not by the Gods. And he fears that the armies of the ones who have renounced love might even reach these souls that have been taken there and convert them.
And the ending with the Valkyrie who disobeyed him, even though entirely a creature of his will -- perhaps reckoning the cost of reformation, and attempting to ensure that its spirit will reach the future?
More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Particularly earth.
Bit of a break in the heat. Rooms much more liveable. Still the busy road, but that's only noise. The absence of fumes and heat (presumably a change in wind with the weather) makes much more of a difference. The cost is much higher than what the locals pay in rent, but absent the caravanserai mentality, there would be no market whatsoever, an nowhere to travel to. The caravan continues.
The fundamentals are good -- wood floors, open space, double-glazed windows, but the clothesline is an old synthetic yarn that leaves tiny splinters in the clothing, the air conditioner was literally packed with dry and oily dirt (a half inch on the filter), and there were other electrical/plumbing things. In addition, there wasn't an open laundry room, so it's been a few weeks of hand-washing. It's being run as an inexpensive rental, so this apparently the mentality of an inexpensive rental in this part of the world. Which is odd. There's no reason that it couldn't be run shipshape without doubling the rent, but that's apparently the distinction. Hopefully, the month of exhaust fumes from the road won't cause any lingering cloudiness.
Oddly, I came here from the Jedi Council city, which had its own difficulties at times (Yoda's swamp, perhaps), and just before I left, I was watching Tarkovski's Solaris one night after dinner, and was struck by the soundtrack on the driving scene after the rural home at the beginning. Listening only to the sound, I was struck by how nightmarish it was. Just the constant rush of traffic, but...
In a moment of cynicism, I wonder if the world (multiplied tenfold in the last hundred years) has thought through what might happen if hundreds of millions of people in its most powerful country just start lying as hard as they can -- which seems to be the way things are going. Our mediated ways of understanding the way things are in the world won't necessarily pick up on this, but the context of everyday experience will change, and unrest will grow. And the mechanisms that have been developed to suppress unrest have grown quite potent, albeit quietly, over the last fifty years or so.
Ultimately, you do have to be a good person, if this civilization thing is going to work. ("You," not "one.") You don't have to accept the prevailing notion of the good, but you do need to formulate your own idea of the good, and especially in that case of exception, hold to it with all your being. The real danger is in the (now apparently increasing) thought that neither the common notion of the good, nor private notions of the good, nor the notion of private notions of the good can claim authority. In a crisis, of course, the wagons will circle around the first, but precisely because that will happen at the expense of the second and the third, we, quite wisely, won't entirely believe it.
Followed a small rabbit-hole to a digital facsimile of an early Gospel text at the Vatican library. On a whim familiar to anyone with a smattering of Greek or Latin who has ever visited a museum with artifacts from ancient history, decided to zoom in to see if I could make out anything myself, across 1700 years. Literally the first word I looked at: αποκαλυται.
And to bed, I think.
Again, my yeoman's Greek is full of misleading notions, but...
Conjecture: The missing root in "αρτον επιουσιον" was from a neologism, perhaps by the first translators to Greek.
"Should we say αρτον eχουσια?"
"Νο, it's not about power or authority, it's about the thing itself. Επι-ουσια is more like it."
"But that's not a word."
"Perhaps you haven't grasped what it is that we're doing here..."
In the Soviet film "Road to Saturn," the Russian spy who infiltrated the training program that the Germans were using to train Russian operatives is sitting at the table, drinking with one of the Russian women who are apparently being run in a parallel program. She looks at him with disdain, and says "You even drink like a German...We Russians have the truth, but we live in s--t up to our ears."
One peculiarity of some folks from the large country to the east whom I've encountered is a disdain for brooms. It took me a while to realize that this was a learned aversion, rooted in social distinction. The poor have brooms, the normal folks have vacuums. Similarly, both there and in other places, excessive organization or hygiene practices is sometimes marked as German behaviour. The need to distinguish yourself, for what might be entirely legitimate reasons, from the people of another culture can sometimes cause you to cede to them some objectively necessary aspects of human, as distinct from animal, behaviour. I presume this happens unconsciously.
The only way to keep this from happening is perhaps a culturally distant model. Two random cultures in the Americas might equally cultivate a specific Japanese mental discipline. Or perhaps it is possible to only have completely transcendent cultural models, notions of perfection not associated with any lineage or region. Perhaps America serves for this in the global context, or used to serve for this.
But there does have to be a discipline. Like the spy infiltrating the training program, you do need to have sufficient distance from both your own culture and the culture that is being proposed as the model, and yet be focusing your mental and spiritual energy on the task. As a result, being neither fish nor flesh becomes an objective of the psyche. (And the character is genuinely between two worlds a bit, as demonstrated by an almost unconscious sniff of the knuckle after sipping the drink.)
That focus is perhaps equivalent to the truth that the woman was speaking about. The desire for perfection that is so strong that it makes you consider the lesser perfections (e.g., hygiene, brooms) something that should be renounced. And yet, this focus, this apperceptive awareness, left to its druthers, would likely find those sorts of things useful.
Rheingold livestream from Bayreuth, a coffeehouse across from the capital of the old Republic, while trying to finish Jaeger's Paideia. The argument of giants over the completed hall, mortals hungry -- not for the spirit of youth, the original bargain (that which giveth joy to their youth, perhaps), but gold. And then the question of the ring of power, and then the murder of the brother. An old story.
We fashion aesthetics, picturings, of past dystopias in an attempt to avoid them. Jack-booted thugs, etc. (Which, to be fair, is sometimes necessary due to the danger of imitation.) But if you are acting in a craven manner and causing harm, you are creating that which the observers will eventually fashion an aesthetic around and learn to fear, and to teach others to fear. And the aesthetic, or picturing, which is to say, the sense of how it is with the world, will then necessarily describe you. This might be the place just beyond where the thinker sits.
Honestly like trying to read and think in an unventilated tollbooth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. (Which I would also try to do, if it were necessary.)
It's odd, though not unlikely, that these rooms are the antinomy of the present place (industrialization, etc.), while the dank, lightless rooms in the last place were a corresponding antinomy (contemplation, etc.). When renting apartments on a strict budget, once things are no longer neutral, they become characteristic of the place, occasionally too much so.
Computer/connection more than a bit wonky over the last several days. Might need to do another rebuild.
Bayreuth season opens tonight, I think. Hope springs eternal. Though mostly in the countries to the north. As for the professor in Vanya or any number of migrants from Africa or the Middle East making their way through the forests -- the picture of a Swedish cabin, that notion of northern civilizations, can exert a peculiar fascination in midsummer in southern Europe.
It's an interesting time in the shining city on the hill, as the world can see. This isn't an accidental executive -- when a preponderance of hundreds of millions have to cast their vote, the verdict is never not meaningful.
At the end of the sixteenth century, the travelling theatre in England changed. People now had to pay to get in. (This resulted in a few brawls.) The theatre started to be staged in guild halls and commercial centers, and the audience strained to show as many outward signs of wealth as they possibly could. In the well-told tale, this has a lot to do with the Reformation.
If you believe that the having of money and power are good in themselves, and sufficient for the devotion of a life's work, you will make a certain kind of world. In a prosperous society, this ostentatious flaunting of wealth and power might seem like an effective mechanism for keeping the factories churning and the trucks of frozen hamburgers rolling. But correlation is not causation. And when even the philosophers become pragmatic about the relationship between civic ideals and industrial prosperity, the proposition that life is a game, with the goal being to acquire wealth and powerful positions, and that success in this game writes both the rules of the game and the meaning of the game, begins to sink its deeper roots among the hundreds of millions.
Ground yourself in the truth of your being each day, and you will come to know the character of the times.
The noise and pollution of these rooms are really difficult. Like trying to read Henry James in the median of I-95. And not the good bits. Baltimore. Jersey.
After the sunless rooms with sewage problems in the last country, I seem to be encountering housing antinomies. Excesses in one direction or the other. (Not being able to book sufficiently in advance due to some admin shenanigans was the main cause.)
Onward, in moderation.
You can't waste time, and your life, vaguely gesturing at the pervasive corruption. Go back to the texts that were written before the corruption set in -- they're freely available now, and not the province of the academic libraries (that nobody uses now, anyway). Come to a separate understanding of the world strong enough to stand in the light of the tradition, and if the world, or some small portion of it, has need of it, help them if you can.
Shifting tactics on making the rooms workable. The irritation and infection, which I at first thought was an illness from the journey, doesn't appear to be particulate-based. The air is stale, especially in the afternoon, but the summertime 2.5 numbers are negligible. (There have been places during this journey where the meter has gone to purple--approximately 3-4x what's usually considered a lock-the-doors crisis stateside.) Perhaps it's a dust mite thing -- I did clear almost an inch of packed dust off of the climate control filters when I arrived. Bagged the curtains, rolled the rug, and covered the mattress in a plastic tarp. Will see if the symptoms persist.
It does have a psychological effect. Bit off the game. Onward.
Stardust at the Proms. Hoagy C. seems to be orbiting back into the cultural view. Probably won't extend to the more playful corners of his catalogue. But there is some worthwhile magic in his stuff. I remember walking through the part of the campus at Indiana that inspired Stardust -- quite an idyllic spot.
This is a part of the world marked by atavistic political structures. Perhaps this country is a kingdom. A kingdom has a king, and usually dislikes him intensely. (At least one of his two bodies. Girard goes so far as to say that given the fascination with the model, and the rivalry that it generates, a king is simply a condemned prisoner with an exceptionally long commutation of sentence.) But in such a culture, it is thought, nonetheless, that there should be a king, and this king is the one at hand. A republic tends to function in a different, more mercurial manner. With occasionally problematic results, given the types of people who can come to power. Historically, this part of the world has seen many states in this model -- witness the monarchies that essentially governed the old Republic and the large nation to the east for decades.
A nation doesn't change its character by political action, but by cultural transformation. A kingdom can't become a republic by electing a republican slate. In the same manner, the government has nothing to do with whether a country is a kingdom, a pure democracy, or a republic. The people make the king. Transformation, if it is desired, has to come in the nation's notions of itself, before its political actions can be characterized as transformative.
Apolitical, of course, as to local questions. None of the local political factions or paradigms seem to hold much truth or seem justified to me, which is as it should be. They exist for the people of this place, and the people of this place are the only ones who can find them either necessary or superfluous. The form of the state is a matter for the people of the place.
One thing to keep in mind in the context of American political discussions: In East Germany a generation ago, the border guards were convinced to fire on people attempting to escape by being told that the people scrambling over the wall were stealing the value of their education from the state.
These questions are not entirely anodyne.
Still trying to find a way of using these rooms. Picked this one over the usual residential place, as a business seemed safer than a random person given the politics, and, more importantly, there was a solid table and chair. I cleaned out as much of the accumulated dust from the climate control as I could reach, wiped down all the surfaces, and cleared the drains (no chemicals), but the air still feels bad, and there are some corresponding systems. (To understand the nature of a place, watch the way your physical and psychological mechanisms function.)
Wind from the south in the AM brought clean air, but the shift to the west and the heat of the afternoon made things stale again. Hard to tell if the the bad things are coming from inside or outside. Likely a bit of both.
Since there turned out to not be a laundry room, it's hand laundry for the most part, a skill I acquired from the (also peak tourist--summer) garret across from the economics college in Bucharest. Part of the difficulty is that some shenanigans a couple of months ago left me with a bit less of a reserve than I'd like, and I couldn't book the last two places sufficiently in advance.
Onward.
Interesting, Taverner's Veil of the Temple is opening the Edinburgh Festival this year. I remember the Lincoln Center performance shortly after the Temple Church premiere. Groundling ticket, so the floor for the full eight hours -- composer in attendance, signalling for the audience to rise by raising both arms in a grand gesture as he stood. And then on to the dawn. Time (and the time) can be known in many ways, if you don't take it for granted.
Interesting talk about sugar in the carbonated drinks. The pivot to corn syrup was Nixon, I think, primarily because of Cuba. Wondering if there's anything in play there -- Florida businessmen seem to be driving it. When I was still eating processed foods, Diet Coke was the elixir of choice, it's sort of a NYC business thing.
Not exaggerating the current quarters. It's near a nice part of the capital, basically the UWS of the city, but it downhill, in an industrial quarter, with a bit of a canyon above a narrow, busy street. Basically like going from the most unheimlich quarter of Louisiana to the most toxic corner of Bayonne. (At several multiples of the prevailing local rents.) Hopefully, the one month's stay won't be too catastrophic on the health.
Odd and powerful dreams after leaving the last country, a country characterized by strong dreams. I haven't entirely put aside the notion that there might be a spiritual ground for the wars in this part of the world. A divided sky.
Onward.
Interesting, the guiding trope of the TLS this week is the deep state, as reflected in American thought. Given that the notion first surfaced in the LRB, describing political structures in the Arab states, the long arc of thought appears to have reached its end--and hopefully not its apotheosis. Like the other expressions, having reliably indicated a certain thing in being for a certain space of time. The bits of sapient mud will have to think up some new noises now.
I've mentioned this several times, but I think the general notion is important, and might explain many things: within the prosperity of the postwar industrial forms, which can function equally for a strong civil society and a weak civil society, things are starting to fall apart a bit. Academic credentials, experience, and skills tend not to count for much. You must be liked. They're not creating an ordered society, they're inviting people to a party. If you're the sort of person who is to be invited and you have the right education, skills and experience, so much the better. Frankly, I've never liked parties, and I've never thought that the point of life was to be found acceptable by other people. Our task is to hold the tent up in the present age, not to relax in the billowing part with the greatest ease. A society, within its time, continues to strain upward using the shared forms of experience, rather than severally enjoy the ultimately meaningless party until it's time to leave.
Another note along these lines: until I spent some time abroad (writes Ovid), I didn't have a sense of my own ethnic identity in the minds of others. When you grow up from childhood in a certain context, you tend to assume that the way you are being treated is the way that people are treated. There is the notion of "the conversation" among disfavored minorities in America, when the adults try to point out the dangers to their otherwise blissfully ignorant children. I never had any real grounding in my ethic heritage, but in retrospect I can see that it was a cause of some contention within my family and among their associates. As I looked back over my experiences, noticed how things worked out, and remembered the things that were said, it dawned on me that, at least in some cases, my perceived ethnic heritage was the dispositive factor at certain crucial moments. The challenge, now that I've had such a conversation with myself, is to preserve the transcendent ground on my side of the fence, and keep those kinds of thoughts on the other side of the fence--where they have been all along.
Peculiar journey. The last rooms, although I had stayed in them before, proved difficult, as with the midsummer foliage and the wall opposite, it was a bit like a basement, and the reason for the dozen or so air fresheners around the WC and hallway became apparent, as I slowly became aware that there was a sewage blockage. Rented at multiples of the local cost, of course, with added insurance costs. Looking back on it now, as I consciously just swam the tide, as it were, at the time. Travel in this part of the world for an American of Slavic/German ancestry isn't necessarily straightforward at times. There's an ethic of rules of hospitality, and everyone's eager to make a bit of money on the tourist industry, but they sometimes clearly expect clueless Americans from Disneyland with rolling luggage from the airport. And Bosnia is not a place where you would want to tally up and remember the micro-aggressions on sidewalks, benches, and grocery stores. Just swim on through a country bedeviled by more spiritual forces than most Americans could handle for more than a few days. (Like many other countries in the region.)
Rented luggage storage on checkout day, which I had previously thought to be a luxury, but came to understand a necessity. The contractor was a Celtic pub, which was reassuring, but I then checked that sense as deceiving when I realized it was staffed entirely by (kilted) locals. Peculiarly un-Hibernian. So I made a point of going through the bag item by item on a park bench afterwards, as I have no intention of spending a decade in a Serbian prison from contraband that had accidentally fallen inside somehow.
Then the difficult journey. Afterwards, figured out enough of the tram to get from the distant bus station to the center. The Sbux across from the parliament had a WC that reeked of sewage, so I just briefly ducked in before decamping to a chair outside for the 90 minutes or so before the diplomats' mass at the Cathedral. (Audibly translated from English to French by someone in the back, including the words of institution and--perhaps--consecration.) Then to the check-in, did the first level of cleaning in the rooms in a rather noisy and industrial neighborhood (but very close to desirable areas and the main roads). As it turns out, the listed shared laundry facilities amount to contacting the staff, scheduling a pick-up, and then paying 5e/load, so I'm back to laundromats and hand-washing, like in Bucharest a little over a year ago. Humble quarters. And then the grocery for water and food. (Made sure to go back to the Sbux and the same grocery the next day, rested, cleaned, and more professionally dressed -- all of the cultures in this part of the world are honestly an inch from fascism (in different, interesting ways), and one does have to both be careful of such things and not care a bit about them.
Last bit of cleaning of the rooms today, including prising the half-inch of caked dust from the internal filter of the AC unit. (Peculiarly, the way these units are designed here, presumably given the inability to run ductwork through external walls of unreinforced masonry, there's no fresh air from these units -- they invariably recycle room air.)
Onward, in a (or perhaps the) manner of speaking.
Day of setting up, reacquainting myself with this part of the city, remembering that is was possible to work and think here. If you try to make these jumps without care for that sort of thing, it's five days before you can read, a week before you can think, and a week and a half, if not a fortnight before it's possible to write. The dog doesn't bark, and the caravan moves on.
Part of looking to the types of folks who were displaced during the second world war (Adorno, Benjamin, Mann et al.) is creating a mimetic model of a person who does something more than survive the journey.
Le Carre told the story of going backstage to meet Thomas Mann after one of his unsuccessful lectures on the latter's return to Germany. The writer, standing there in his suspenders and collared dress shirt. The young student Cornwall asked to shake his hand, and did, and remembered it. The reason we make statues is that we can then think about ourselves as being in the company of such folks, not just staring up at the plinth. Becoming like them, to a certain degree. It allows us to place ourselves in the contexts of ideas and experiences that we would otherwise consider completely alien to us. Imitation is a door, not a way of life, but it is a good door.
The Kantian notion of appearances ultimately being the ground of things does point us in the direction of the things themselves (perhaps the ultimate goal, answering Jacobi's complaint), and it also makes us aware of what other people are doing with their truth claims. The world has always been overlaid by shared views of the world composed of gossip, misdirection and mistake -- the risk of present error might be that in the attempt to ground these perceptions in the way that things actually are, one of these systems needs to acquire extraordinary mechanisms of perception and corresponding influence so that truth can govern the world. And the things going on now quietly, behind the scenes with certain California data-based companies, when combined with AI management, might actually being such a scheme into existence, and more troublingly, action.
To which, I can only reply, with a bit of Kant in my rucksack -- go back to Kant!
Interesting balancing of continental civil rights and archaic practices of privilege aiming to eventually accomplish much the same thing.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a072aa94-9264-4076-8542-15177b2d80e3
To the local research library -- from what I've been told, the only one open to the public, associated with one of the large trusts sustaining the old city. Rather problematic place. Books have to be requested 4.5 hours before closing. Electronic catalog in need of a cleanup; perhaps a dozen categories for Language: English. One of the two volumes of Andric short stories I managed to request was also in need of some cleaning -- lifted it up and opened it before I noticed that it was covered with what I hope was caked-on food of some kind. Was hoping to find Andric's thesis on spiritual life in Bosnia under the Ottomans, but peculiarly, the only edition in the catalog was in German. Also, a biography of a Sufi saint from the UK who has written some interesting things on Shakespeare proved un-locatable in time. Did notice an interesting title on Islamic courts in the old Republic. Will have to check it out on the next visit, whenever that might be.
Walked over to the cultural center for the first half or so of a set by a local blues/funk ensemble. Quite good. Was reading Hoffmann's Serapion Brothers. A bit uncanny at points -- to be sitting in a converted synagogue in Bosnia listening to a blues jam while reading a story about a poet and composer, old friends, meeting during the carnage of the Napoleonic wars and talking about art and war.
Local recycling appears to have dropped off a bit, as in the neighboring nations. Usual bins not in evidence, and the central bin location in this half of the city appeared to be filled with garbage when I ran past the other day. Two local incentivizing machines, one dispensing transit tokens, and the other dispensing food for stray dogs (a concept I've seen in a few countries, and always found a bit puzzling -- the prescence of hungry strays at the waste disposal point would seem to disincentivize)--but these generally don't accept the large water bottles that buid up from the daily supply.
Build broad, stong pipes, and--only then--figure out ways to incentivize the inflow.
Oddly, in the market-based country on the east of the peninsula, recycling appears to be going well. (So long as you find out which sector of the city is controlled by the recycling-friendly factions.) Second-to-last time I was there, it took some doing to find a clothes donation bin; I finally found one by a local Orthodox church. On my next visit, they were quite ubiquitous.
One other oddity about the northern city in that county. On my first visit, I rented an apartment in a concrete tower at the top of the hill, from which I could see the flashing lights on the immense steeple of the old medieval church in the distance. On the second visit, I was much closer in, but facing the other direction, so I looked up at the apartment I had rented on the first visit. On the third visit, I returned to the first apartment, and as I looked for the second apartment below, I realized that it was precisely on line with the steeple of the medieval church. Not a function of the street grid, or of main arterries, as the second place was off the main roads. More things in heaven and earth.
Odd day. Went to the coffeehouse in the early afternoon to read, and elected to sit outside amid the upturned chairs (morning storm), louring clouds, and occasional drizzle rather than risk the airless rooms inside. The people here seem to be a bit like the Chicago folks -- apparently comforted by airless warmth. The closeness of it, perhaps. Then the rain started in earnest, so I explored the downtown mall across the street, picking up a few necessary supplies.
Then, a long day filled with completely useless and frustrating matters, well into the night, missing the free concert at the arts center that I had mentally penciled in.
If things were going well, if Denmark didn't have the sulphur smell to it, I'd still try to wake from the thoughtless tread through the days that seems to animate so much of the world. But, with things going the way they are, waking isn't a virtue, but a necessity.
Postprandial: "July Rain" -- "Where will you go when spring floods the earth?"
Important set of UK international chambers seems to have reached a conclusion on the conflict in the Levant. That the sort of thing (unlike almost everything else in the news) that is more significant than it might at first appear to be. Perhaps. Haven't followed those conversations closely.
One tension in Kant is that knowledge can't reach beyond experience, and perception, and therefore experience, is limited to appearance. That which limits our thoughts is itself a bit false. Or at least chimerical. But, like a dull schoolteacher, it still wields the rod.
Things are seldom what they seem / Skim milk masquerades as cream...
Also. If you have gone through a time when there were extraordinary physical difficulties associated with simple existence, these times will recur to your mind in the future. Don't accept the pop-culture explanation for this. This is your life reaching from a place of danger to a place of safety. From the place of safety, remember the place of danger, conscious that it is of the same material life. Build that bridge for recollection in tranquility.
As I've become acquainted with the subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of this (historically unique) part of the world, lines of force have developed. I incline towards a certain place when I encounter a certain difficulty. I might devoutly wish myself into the busy streets of Bucharest, or (as happened in a difficult February in the nation to the south) the mountains of Bulgaria. And this isn't entirely about the empirical aspects of the place. Once you find the three (perhaps four) lines of main force -- from the West, the south, and the East (and perhaps the north), you can sort of feel where you are in that spiritual geography.
Keeping in mind as well, that pining is a classic human fault. No matter where you are, or in what straits you might be, there have been times in your life, or (/and) there will be times in your life when you wish that you were precisely in the place where you are. Everything in a life tends to the essence of that life, as it becomes known in time.
Discouraging day. Discovered a plumbing problem in the rental in the AM, which might have been running sewage through the shower drain for some time now, went out for a Sunday hot chocolate ($2.50), did some reading (Peirce, Wolff biography (couldn't focus), Jaeger's Paieda (could focus)) at the cafe and at some parks around the city, caught a bit of the Mass of the Faithful at the local parish church, but arrived later than planned, as I mis-timed the vespersII mumbling and the crosstown walk. (Have avoided the cathedral since the tourist/massgoer confusion that ended with my walking in despite the fact that the old fellow was grabbing onto me and trying to pull me back.) Then to the theatre for an hourlong piece that the English-language website listed an hour later than the (apparently correct) time on the local version. Perils of data entry.
Eavesdropping on a slightly tape-delayed Carmina Burana from the east now, quite good, especially the soli. Heard an excellent version in Bucharest earlier in the year from the back balcony no-view. (Intentional, as I didn't want to be distracted by the staging.)
Some sabbaths one survives, rather than finds the triumph. Boldly on to the other six days.
One result of the interesting paths of late, and long, is having remarkably little tolerance for the "All is lost, I ordered my latte without foam" line of thinking. It's a social and historical fact that in a world without consciousness of the divine, and people even unable to imagine the possibility of their own experience of eternal time, that in the game for social power, people cultivate habits of conspicuous consumption and learned incapacity. And to be rather obvious about it.
The game is at least partially to 'get a rise' out those around you. This is the part that gives an advantage in the social game. When you become angry at a person, group, or conceptual belief, it's the first step to being controlled by the question of them. A complicated formulation, but follow it. Anger at the night draws us into the question of day and night, as the two are the same question. Heraclitus, I think.
So when a conspicuous consumer appears before you, cultivate dispassion, and look as closely as you can, and try to understand.
Thinking about the friction that I encountered at the discount Turkish chain during the resupply run. It's the sort of thing I wouldn't think twice about if I had encountered it in, say Jersey City, or some other place, with folks of identical nationalities. It did rather stand out given the general mutal-respect tone here, though.
Outdoor ballet festival performance. Interesting. Sort of Twyla Tharp/Jerome Robbins to Dennishawn and the 1920s Olympic cult to a battle between Balanchine and Robbins won by Akram Khan.
The initmacy of this city is sometime surprising. Basically the scale of a well-attended NYC block party.
On the other hand, I have seen tens of thousands of the locals jumping up and down and screaming in fury in the night -- football derby, anniversary edition, on a prior visit. Left at halftime.
Walked through the old city afterwards, which isn't entirely the tourist/nightlife area found in the more commercialized countries to the north and east. People are still using it to live in.
Interesting episode at the Turkish clothing chain at the more Western of the two downtown malls. Was looking at an Oxford shirt, so I took the three that I was going to buy, walked to the mirror, put the shirts down on the shelf next to it, and put one of the shirts on over the long-sleeve shirt I was wearing. A clerk came over, and for some reason told me that I couldn't put the shirts on a shelf where they didn't belong. I accommodated the request, moved them onto the original shelf, and went back, and put the shirt on a second time, like a jacket. Whereupon the fellow told me that I couldn't do that (he hadn't mentioned that the first time) -- I would have to go to the dressing room to try it on over my clothing.
"Friend," I said, I "if you tell me to leave, I'll leave without buying anything, but I'm not going to buy this shirt without doing this." He stepped away, I put the shirt on over my clothing, took it off, bought the three shirts, and left.
Sort of a discount chain. Not exactly Saks.
Interesting place, sometimes.
[I should add that most folks are very friendly and hospitable, especially to US types. And the Balkan ethic of hospitality is very strong throughout the old Republic. Quite the matter of honor.]
The irony of the great conflict (or, at times, game) between Western Christianity (which has its own divisions of mortal enmity) and Islamic fundamentalism, is that the most vitriolic and intractable forces on either side occupy the same position of social conservatism within their society. Left solitary and adrift, they would most naturally land in the part of the other society that was most intractably opposed to their own cast of mind. There is a reason for this. This opposition is animated by the larger movement of encounter. Closeness and similarity, not difference and distance, brings conflict. (Girard is essential.) This isn't just irony and folly. The encounter and the conflict have a purpose. The preservation of all things under different aspects.
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Think of it as an island surrounded by land, and all around the shore, people are building bridges to it. They will usually succeed, given the cunning of the island. But it is possible that one of the land-dwellers can find himself on a bridge on which he will not be able to get to the half of the bridge nearest the island without an extraordinary bit of luck, grace, what you will.
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Tread gently.
The old Rothschild line about peaks and valleys being for amateurs parallels, and perhaps derives from a similar precept about happiness and unhappiness. (Which is distinct from pain and difficulty.) When things go up and down, when they agitate, they teach us that they exist. We perceive the territory. The question then becomes what they might be. Mountains teach us about the earth (despite the Victorian industrial rail travellers running down the curtains upon seeing them), and we then become aware of the prescence of the earth. The truth of the earth, though, isn't necessarily the mountains.
Anniversary of the deaths of Jefferson and Adams. One, the author of an important document of international diplomacy and an important law for his state, and the founder of a university. The other, a politician who helped to unite the merchant puritans of the north with the plantation founders of a more European inclination to the south, and who was largely responsible for the written constitution of his state.
Kindertotenlieder by the city's symphony orchestra at a local genocide memorial conference. At first, I thought looking to Vienna for the local vocabulary of mourning was odd, but then I recollected (hear the Hegelian sense) that I was sitting in a theatre that had been built by Austria-Hungary. These are ancient commixtures. Very clear overlay of the local meaning on the dynamics of the piece -- much more mournful and pensive than I remember in other hearings, very appropriate to the moment and the manner, and the intentions of the players. Very capable group.
Lessons from antiquity, con't: When the dictator comes to power over the aristocracy through popular support (e.g., Pisistratus), it necessarily implies that the aristocracy, the few, the mesne lords, had lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
The Republic, if we can keep it, is of course res/publica. Enlightenment political theorists applied the term to many forms of government, including monarchies, legislative rule, etc. before settling on a democratically elected legislature. Res is thing, here the thing of common concern. And there's where the term does its work. The inferential construction of the public goods -- the saying of what it is that we have when we have something together. Heidegger, followed by absolutely none of the dictionaries that I've found, suggested that it traces to ρημα, word. When the common construction of the shared life is empty, a person takes its place, and becomes the republic.
Noticed some interesting phrasing in an administration statement today. "Under President X, no one is above the law." Let those with ears to hear, hear.
Inexplicable late morning. The sleep of the place appears to have made a bit of an incursion. Perhaps connected to the pollution, or the changed paths of the run that resulted. The main thing is to strike at the root -- I learned that in the country to the south this February. To a deeper asceticism.
Thinking of the years of classical theatre verse and swordplay. Many of the varying endeavours of the last space of years or so might be understood as an attempt to create a life that could sustain a good bit of that sort of thing. The lack of such things in present experience would seem to ipsa loquitor, as they say.
In fairness, having prepared for many auditions en route, I can testify that reciting classical verse by yourself while walking down the street can draw some odd looks. And that's even without the rapiers.
Path of the run took me into some serious pollution haze, which was odd for this time of year. Thought it would be local, but, in the event, it extended over a good bit of the run, and then I had to return through it. Checking the pollution monitors on return to the rooms, the levels were third-world levels, the sort of numbers that kept me in the rooms with a HEPA whirring away when I visited here in winter. Will increase the hydration in the coming days, etc.
That which does not kill us will quite likely try again tomorrow.