A peculiar 24 hours, weather-wise.  Strong cold winds from the south suddenly appeared yesterday afternoon.  Storms in the air, battles perhaps, in the sense of meaningful things contending.  The air marked by the acrid smell of the southern air here.  Then, apparently, the victory of calmer things, and clean air and sunshine, presumably from the north.

Wandered through one of the malls.  Not quite the glittering and flashing desire-machines of the country to the northeast, but a solid place.  I seem to be able to sense the thread that goes from the market-based modern malls of the country to the southwest, through places like this, and to the north.  Perhaps my imagination, but it seems the vehicle of  one of the local social sensibilities, tracing out its idea of what a great, good place might be, and so it might be in some tension with the other groups.  Instead of coffee from a small, century-old tin pot, digital espresso machines costing hundreds of dollars arrayed between the televisions and the laptops.  Such things can be built from private notions of perfection, or in imitation of distant models, or against the proximate others.  In the last case, it might have that character for the others as well.  An amiable tabernacle, though.

Stopped in at a shrine of a local saint.  Whenever you see a sign or a photo on the wall indicating that a pope stopped in here to pray, you get the sense that you might be in a worthwhile place, as opposed to the place across the street.  Or perahsp not.  Perhaps he's just indicating the neighborhood. 

Paradoxically, the unreflective usually take the sense of being in danger as the primary indication on the question of being in danger, vel non.

 At every moment of your life, no matter the place, no matter the situation, every other moment in your life has a relation to it, and is hoping for it to be a certain thing.  No matter the present situaiton, there will be or were moments in your life when you might think about this situation, and have a needful relationship to it, wanting it to be a certain thing.  Our life also has meaning through intension -- these moments rely upon one another.  Perhaps the essence of "being true to yourself."  

Paradoxically, physical rest and getting away from the urban areas can actually work against dispassion.  The water clears, things come into view.  Thoughts are heard and held more clearly.

Like the executive in Priestley's "I have Been Here Before" who attempts to signal to his wife that the idyllic country inn might be more dangerous that the city hotel filled with the blare of jazz bands. 

Once again, I find myself in the southern Balkans, and pining to flee to the mountains of Bulgaria.  (And, presumably, when there, I would sense the path northward.)   

Precisely the sensation I had in the country to the south in February.  But the art of exploring occasionally means trying the thing you didn't like before, but with a slightly different aspect (different culture, faith).  

It's by no means as bad as it was, and the quarters are in a decent neighborhood.  I look forward to sussing out the cultural bits in the remaining time, but I don't think I'll linger. 

 

------

 

Orthodox - having the true faith.  Western: truly having the faith.  

"In the holiness of truth." 

 "Up to half my kingdom"  -- i.e., I will remain king.  Giving away a preponderance of the kingdom is the only thing that would change that.  He will retain 51% of the shares.  Likely not an actually limiting principle.  Expectations of a request well under that.

 Decollation of the Baptist.  Officially late summer.  The beginning and the end of the ministry: Ecce, agnus Dei to Go, then and...   Ending in the beginning.

There are three things that I'm trying to accomplish now, and today, I was able to spend a few hours on one of them.  In fairness, I did spend several hours on CV distribution, &c., which I try to do every several days or so, in addition to the real-time alerts. And yet, I was always doing things.

At the state university, I learned how to plod, which can be a skill when you cover ground in the long run, but that also means that the course of the day fills up with the exercises, meditations, etc. that keep the candle going from day to day.  The trick is to know when to draw from those energies to feed the projects, when there are projects that it would be good to spend as much time on as possble.  I certainly wouldn't give up the daily routines, the running, the eavesdropped Mass (liturgy of the word only if on tape), the focused morning reading, etc.  And yet, the thing carrying the mechanism through the day can fill up the day, and there's usually not much to show for it, though sometimes there's some useful things in the writing.

As Heid observed, the plodding is a form of existence that already knows its end and is working towards it.  And that can have an effect on a life.

More mercurial, perhaps.  To the extent that it's possible without destabilizing the covered wagon heading down the trail.  

 Flinging CVs into every open transom.  (Far and few, far and few...)

Lasciate ogni speranza... 

Have tried the local water over the last few days, after ascertaining that it was at least theoretically safe.  Interesting.  From the local river mostly, apparently, in addition to springs, which are likely abundant, given the surrounding mountain ranges.  Heavily treated, though.  Will let it sit out for a few hours before use, if I continue on with it.

 

------

 

Returned to Pynchon's Against the Day recently.  More and more clear to this pugnacious reader that it's about being shocked, or occasionally seduced, out of the episodic cartoon by the events of the aforementioned day.  The plot lines, in a fanciful though likely not entirely inaccurate reading, seem to trace the varying threads of the post-9/11 response to things.  But eventually we're inside a labyrinth of more realistic events affecting a slate of characters on a Dostoyevskian scale -- perhaps an uncharitable reading on my part, but I think, about halfway through, we get to the point at which you would have to know and care about the models for the characters to follow the plot-lines.  Even given the mind-candy settings (Michaelson-Moreley, higher maths, etc.). Or perhaps it's not the best novel to read whan nomading through the Balkans.  It requires the ennui of the UWS coffeehouse in early evening.  

Might see it through this time, but time and mental focus, assuming there's a difference between those two things, are precious things.

I've joked about this a bit, but it does reflect some rather serious thought.  Given the peculiar times between the beginning of the JD and the present, I would likely take a Socratic, if not Shermenesque, view to serving in leadership or government.  As an artist or a writer, or even a plain advocate in the courts, I could explain a few things, and help people out.  But in that Tamino didn't knowingly enter the trials, I suspect he would have very little business being in Sarastro's court afterwards.  I have my understanding; it suffices.  In a way, it does reconfirm the initial vocation, which was run a bit akew in the context of the NYC industry.  Vissi d'arte, &c.

I would not underestimate the dangers of the present political moment.  There seems to be a general sanction on lying as hard as you can, possibly extending to matters high and low. 

Which in better times is at least mildy frowned upon.  

Odd, the Great and Terrible Gurgle appears to have taken a dislike to this subsite.  Completely de-indexed, even after sitemaps, page fixes, and individual pages sent in.  (As I used to do this sort of thing for a living, not entirely clueless in that area.)  Also, the archive bots seem to have developed a similar distaste -- last snapshots were in March. (Posted a few pages there this afternoon, perhaps it will whet the bots' appetite.)

Bit odd.   Time was, this sort of hand-crafted content was the gold standard for search indexing.  A little like realizing that you haven't left any footprints on the trail for the last mile.  Might force me into mass-market authorship, just so I can be sure that a copy or two will still linger on Salvation Army thrift store shelves a century hence.  

 

The basic elements, perhaps: a tenfold increase in the global population in the last century, a vast expansion of industrialization in the Western postwar model, and considerable corruption in the Woodstock-to-Wall-Street generation that followed the generation of giants who built the place. 

 -------------

Not to use the interwebs for grousing or chuntering excessively, but this journeying isn't easy.  Away from the highways of air travel and proper hotels, one does land in the place itself.  In the pond, which is much more different from the last pond than one sunlit upland hill varies from another.  

No simple highway.

LG & Co. very strong at the Proms tonight.  Dvorak sumbime.  Seemed to be a deliberate wobbliness to the triumphs in the Sibelius that really made it interesting.

(Until the end, when it was rightly unalloyed.) 

 

 

 

It's not a disastrous place, just very underdeveloped.  It reminds me of anther city divided by a river, a bit to the southeast.  I can't help but think that part of the difficulty is that silent war. Defining your world as a marginal improvement on theirs, rather than a thing in itself, or taking a more distant model.  The nation to the northeast had less of that threat from the south, and is focused more on the northern models, to better effect.  The vibe is sort of underdeveloped small city in NJ.  Still evidence about of rougher times.  Banks barricaded behind double-door thick glass.  Was waiting between the two doors, and caught a whiff what must have been a cleaning chemical.  Essence of the visit, so far.  But time for improvement.

On the upside, found a decent English-language bookstore (unlike the US, people read here, so in all of these countries, pehaps save one, the bookstores have been ubiquitous).  Everything from abroad, though, so no translated locals.  Some of the shops in the last country made a point of setting a corner aside for translated locals, and that was always a good place to stop in for a bit. 

 

 Went on through midnight last night -- took the late morning.  The later-morning runs are really only practical in the rural areas.  In the cities, if you're not up before dawn, enjoy the coffee inside the blockhouse.

 Gently down the stream.  Well, there used to be a stream there.

In the homeland is the fullness of experience.  This is useful, as the task is to have the fullness of experience in strange lands.  Because the lands might get very strange indeed.

Not the things, not the places, but the possibility of experience that we have tied to them for safekeeping. 

 The news media, like the government, is equally a mechanism for keeping the bad people from getting away with things, and helping the bad people to get away with things.  A flourishing media scene or government can be doing either of these things.  

On this peregrination, I've tried to keep to the capitals and the tourist cities -- this is about travelling and studying while still within (a certain species of) European culture.   This isn't an Indiana Jones journey, in other words.  

That said, the southern parts of the peninsula can be a bit rough, as I discovered over the winter -- even in the larger/tourist cities.  There was a point of decision in January/February: I would either go out and buy some khakis and head into the dirty areas, or increase the amount of time at the kitchen table reading --  opted for the latter.  

I'm in one of the more decent parts of this city here, but there are still some rough edges and inconveniences, just from the nature of the place.  Far from what the locals have to go through, I'm sure, but it is a salutary reminder to stay as close to the pools of light as possible when travelling in this manner.  And there's always the table to read at.

Political coercion is not necessarily something you can identify by the clothing fashions, or even the vocabulary, of those enforcing the general compliance.  If you can't describe the way things are without getting run out of town, arguably, things have come to a pretty bad pass.

I do miss books a bit.  I've been careful to ensure that there were large research libraries nearby, whatever the nature of the times.  Given the peregrinations, though, everything's on the glowing screen of the foldable panopticon. 

On the other hand, I've been equally frustrated with the conditions of the books on occasion.  The other side of the fence is no idyll, just a marginal improvement, all told.

An ebook reader large enough to handle PDFs might be a marginal improvement, but those are still a bit pricey, and I'm wary of carrying expensive things around.  Inexpensive, interoperable, and easily replaced technology has been the watchword on these trips, and that approach seems to have worked well so far.

One of the more revealing things that I've seen in the media from the present American president was the disparaging of the notion that the country is an experiment, a test of a certain social proposition.  This is disconcerting, because I've never encountered a historical narrative that didn't hold this to be true.  For a very long time, the word was governed a certain way, and then another way of thought started to take hold in the northern European island nations.  The colonization of (at least the top half of) the hemisphere was based on this new social order, and if it falls apart after a relatively short run of three or four centuries, we'd lose a lot.  

If you're being tested, and you don't know that it's you being tested, if you prevail, it won't necessarily be you who prevails.  In the same way, we should be clear that a very specific idea of governance and social order is being tested to see if it is a true way for human beings, and it's being tested in the historical context of other ways of going about things.  If things go badly wrong, the conclusion might be drawn that a democratic republic can't be trusted with the mechanisms involved in governing an entire continent.  

It is possible to err.  In the context of a general prosperity, it's easy to forget that. 

(Apolitical -- I have no opinion as to which of the present factions would be most, or least likely to provoke the error.  Just pointing out to the baseball players that they are, in fact, playing baseball.)

I am a bit careful about how I look for opportunities these days -- which trees I shake.  If any of the several networks of folks who've gone up against me in the past decided to be marginally less evil for a brief moment, I could find myself entering a world with an ordained outcome -- "things bad begun..."

So I emphasize the formal aspects of the qualification and experience--so many degrees, so many courses, so many years of experience of practice at a certain level.  But, as I've increasingly discovered, the present order of things relies much less on the way things are than what happens when you talk to people. 

(As strange as that might sound, if you paraphrsed it out, you might reach the essence of the problem.)   

Skipped the AM run to nurse a bit of a twinge through the weekend.  Onward. 

 

 #oscotlandscotland

(Another litmus, perhaps -- those who take these lyrics to be in the past tense, instead of imprecation.)

This is many years of experience talking: the people who are successful and influential in the present order of things (on every level of society) are, by and large, not good people, and the sense of reality that they create in their interactions is not a good world -- despite the structures of postwar industrial prosperity, and the fact that the trucks of frozen hamburgers still roll into town every week.  Perhaps it was ever thus, but it most certainly is thus.

Look to the past.  Piece together a world from the relics. 

 Octave of the Assumption.  Same note, just more high and lonesome.

 One test of the general outlook might be whether someone assumes the calendric octave is a upward journey, or the other thing...

 One difficulty with thinking about religious things is that pretty much everyone who has given their ideas serious thought has a rather good point, and yet they occasionally completely disagree.  The puritans of the new world, for example, all the way to their antinomy in the (still-thriving) know-nothings of the midlands, were vehement in their criticism of orthodoxy.  Several of the founders explicitly equated both the eastern church and the western church to the Vedic pantheon and practices.  As I travel, from time to time, I do pick up on some of the same vibes around the orthodox clergy as I did among the sorcerers (almost invariably apprentice-level) in the theatre and experimental theatre.  And yet, the mind is a mysterious thing, and the whitewashed walls and clerestory doctrines of the reformation might not bring the whole of the human along on their forays into higher things.  Cf., perhaps, "I will draw all things to myself."  

It appears that the good air comes from the north here, while winds from the south bring a peculiarly acrid air.  I've been in some difficult places in the winter (3x -4x the levels of emergency levels of pollution stateside--HEPA at full blast at the desk, and jedi shemaghs over the mouth and nose outside, before they became a political symbol), but I would certainly not want to be here in January and February.  Although I understand that it's significantly better than it used to be.

https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091104.html 

Cf. the Enlightenment vs. the romantic/historical school.  Very similar -- indicating an underlying truth about the mind, perhaps.

Postprandial:

 

 

Perhaps the question we are heading towards: whether a state (as distinct from government) in the service of the 60%-70%, administered by a more or less corruptly selected further subset of the group, is a valid desideratum.  The percentages are high, in historical context, cf. Picketty's second book, but given the industrial mechanisms at hand, an ogliarchy in service of the democratic preponderance is not necessarily the only option at hand.

I see this reflected in local conflicts here.  There seems not to be a push for elections, as the political machine would have enough influence to carry a preponderance, but at the same time, the mechanisms of social advancement are gummed up by the corruption.  (At least in the view of those protesting, or just grousing.)

One misleading notion: that in an increasingly educated society, there are either fewer career slots or fewer signs of social distinction to compete for.  The present reality, seems to be that, as JK Galbraith said when equating the universities of India and the American Midwest, you either go along with things, or find yourself out in the field/street.  Not really a plumage competition there. 

Up past midnight rebuilding the netbook.  It's the sort of computer that folks likely would consider not worth the risks of theft, but the fact that makes that so also does other things in the world.  

Gently down the stream, stream permitting.

If you ultimately believe that words serve only to help groups of people get along, you will create corporate and social structures in which the primary task of each person is to hold such a position in such a world.  

 Google appears to have de-indexed the "ephemera" part of this site.  Spent some time on the seach console figuring it out, and there are a few oddities.  Can't say that I blame it.  Taking up valuable disk space that might be used for the things that people customarily use the internet for.  Will continue puttering around to see if I might have missed a trick.

Looks like I left the last country just in time.  Some of those riot images are places I was walking through & reading in a couple of weeks ago.  Some interesting goings-on near the end sugggested to the (perhaps overly imaginative) observer that it might not be the best time for an American to be wandering around.  And the rooms were very bad.  But a decent, prosperous, and hospitable country (with reasonably priced Starbucks coffee--like NYC in the early aughts).  And the capital of the old Republic.  Listened to the live Bayreuth stream of Rheingold (from a Sbux) while watching night fall on the legislature's building, and the lights come on.  Bit magical.

Like every country, its problems are its own, and should be sorted by the folks with a legitimate interest in the matter.  #primedirective

Still mulling the notion that the fantasy novels of Tolkein (read only once or twice) and C.S. Lewis (re-read yearly) have their sources in undisclosed wartime travels in the Balkans and elsewhere.  Lunatic notion, but the second Lewis novel has clear resonances with his American travels, and the others seem to have a similar verisimilitude -- and the overarching theme is an Englishman type coming into contact with distant cultures. And then there's the powerful City contacts of Charles Williams.  (My hierarchy puts him between the two.)

Every work of fiction is an invitation to fictionalize the life of the author.   

 

 

One trick in securing the housing is to find a place somewhere between the cobblestoned tourist-catering places and the hobbit villages.  Clearly, the present booking has landed me far afield into the latter.  Much like the place in German Romanian Transylvania some time ago, the only difference being that the neighbors' chairs facing the windows are much closer here.  Will be a bit of an exercise in dispassion. Om.

Quiet day.  The goal was to sit quietly and read.  Restoring a bit of the focus that was lost last month in the inner-city rooms.  Quite successful for most of the day.  

To be productive, occasionally you need to think of yourself as an animal, and cause the animal to do the useful things by manipulating surroundings and habits.  While always reserving the capacity of free will that could accomplish everything in an un-caused and spontaneous fell swoop of success.  

Gently down the stream.   

Postprandial cinema: Trial and Error (The Dock Brief), 1962.  John Mortimer play, on Broadway the previous year, adapted for film with Peter Sellars.  The Proto-Rumpole.  Very mid-century UK, a bit like a J.B. Priestley, with morals and apercus of a masonic tincture scattered in among the macarizing.  Worthwhile.

 Pisistratus is still the classical paradigm, perhaps.  Some of the details are almost eerily on-point.  A tyranny brought to power by the people over the oligarchs.  His supporters wearing characteristic garments that one historian said kept them on the farm because they looked ridiculous in the cities.  Reaching out to the conventionally highly-regarded poets and writers, so long as they wrote in service of his golden age.

 I have to wonder if part of the chaos in the country now is from no one explaining the different thories of power, how they relate, and which of them (after a pragmatic alliance with the right-wing think tanks), has suddenly come into almost unchecked power.

These are the corporate types of New Netherlands.  This is a specific theory of power, and virtue (Weber, Gierke, etc.).  Instead of voting for their own representatives, the people voted for their neighbors' boss, in the hope that their neighbors would get what was coming to them.  And now, at least for the nonce, it's America, Inc.

That's the dark view.  There's another way of seeing it, in that very old forms of statecraft are being used in the manner of free-enterprise corporations, and there's an outside chance that new forms of statecraft might result.

It's a vertiginous moment, and one that could still go either way, but very few people seem to realize the nature of the event, and the history of these forms. Or how far we might be from the ground.

I see that India is trying to get a handle on the stray dog problem, interestingly through judicial means.  When the poor neighborhoods are marked by hungry, roaming, suffering carnivorous animals, civilization needs to adjust a few things.  Those in the neighborhoods come to symbiosis with them, of course (with lapses and exceptions), but I can vouch for the fact that they have a different approach to the stranger.

The northern countries have solved the problem admirably by sterilizing them and leaving them in place, but the root of it is that people bring them into the place and then cast them out.   

Local strays I've encountered have seemed quite docile.  Much more like the country to the west in that respect than the one to the southwest.

I'm not exaggerating the noxiousness of Balkan smoking and vaping.  Part of the culture, so you just have to accept that the air will be a bit poisoned in the polis. One reason the morning runs are always calculated to hit the point between the dogs and the first waves of smoking/vaping humans on the sidewalk.  Inter canem et lupem.  

Walked through an absolutely noxious cloud on the way to the grocery.  It's a bit like biking through Harlem -- once you have the first indication of the scent, you try to figue out the vapor trail and pick another vector.  Thought I might need a month of detox afterwards.  And then, in the evening, to the old market on the apparently largely Muslim side of the river, though in fairness the constant mild tincture of sweetness in the air from the vapes was likely coming from the crowds of visitors.  Walked to the mosque at the top of the hill, with the path ending in a sort of parking lot.  Perhaps the wrong approach.  Walked back down the other side of the hill, past a sort of WSQ 5-on-5 halfcout setup.  Some decent shooting, but defense is not an emphasized skill here, nor apparently is rebounding -- the latter ceded by common consent to the tallest fellow underneath.  Perhaps a hesitancy from politeness.

Admittedly, a vegetarian nonsmoking actor from the city would always have some difficulties in this part of the world.  On the other hand, the ubiquity of smoke in the American downtowns now is one reason why I think it would be unlikely that I would head back to a big city.  Dope the ghetto.  Interesting times. 

 Any sufficiently advanced mass-media sphere of public discourse is indistinguishable from magic.  

When in a difficult situation, the most important thing is to keep the situation clear.  The international law of armed conflicts began by forcing the warmakers to make clear the beginning and end of the conflict, who and what was involved, and what they were seeking.  This took centuries. 

Present ways are different than this -- think the John Houseman character in Three Days of the Condor: "I miss the clarity."  

Some difficulties arise when not all of the secrets belong to you, of course.  But making the the situation clear out of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind can be accomplished with the necessary discretion.  Whether it will be at all effective, or really, if anyone will notice, is a secondary concern.  Always ensure that your derring-do is under the right flag, nailed to the mast if necessary.  

Feast of the Assumption.

In which I remember arriving in a new city to begin graduate study, not having secured an apartment in advance.  (Such things were possible, once.) Walking through the carnival for the feast in the old Italian neighborhood, asking at the raffle table where there might be listings for apartments.  They pointed me to the rectory next to the old brick church.  I knocked at the door and asked if they knew of anyone looking to rent an apartment.  They went back into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a typed list, using which which I found an upstairs one-bedroom in an old wooden building a few blocks away.

One of the first things I bought were some small basil and oregano plants, kept on the old kitchen counters.  The orchestra was a short walk away, and the tickets were inexpensive.  The brand-new university library wasn't immense, but it was sufficient.  The artistic studios were the same rooms that were in use in the 1920s and 1930s, in the first popular flourishing of the modern American arts.  It was a beginning. 

Commemoration is memory.  Remembering is an action; it can either be the case or not be the case.  Simply speaking the word "memory" isn't some sort of a spell that can provoke the condition.  You must do these things, however small and insignificant they might seem. 

Interesting, one detail that I missed in the last country: the derisive name of the youth coalition supporting the government is a malapropism suggesting a spelling error in Cyrillic when trying to write "students".  Basically the "skollers".  

The academic structure is taken much more seriously in this part of the world.  Having a degree effects a qualitative change; you become an "academic citizen."  Professional actors list their professors in their bios throughout their career.  Random choruses of the Gaudeamus break out at bus stops and lunch-counters...  [no]

The "unfinished solution" approach the protest groups have been taking  there is interesting.  Still not quite sure what to think of it. 

In fairness, the title "students" isn't a name without negative connotations, when it comes to political groups -- cf. Afghanistan.

 

 

Never expect vindication.  They're using that stick for other things now.

By all means, if you know a particularly worthwhile circle and want to attempt to convince them, that might be a good idea.  But don't launch yourself into the world with a lantern in the expectation that the great and the good yet unknown will recognize the truth in your reasoning.  

Contrary to much of the prevailing philosophy, it is possible to observe, and to reason, and to understand within private experience.  Kant never left his city; Socrates left only to serve in the foreign wars.  The ability to think the critical thought, and the ability to speak to others about it are equally necessary things -- neither can substitute for the other, and both must be the case. 

Also, they're not the same thing. 

Feast of Maximilian Kolbe.  Travelled the world, became an influential scholar using the latest means of the mass media of the time, and yet even within his cult, largely only remembered for the manner of his death.

Perils of not getting a decent autobiography to an influential publisher before the deluge, perhaps.  Though arguably that's not the best use of the brief candle. 

No special knowledge or insight on this, but -- if you look at the projections on most European maps of the Crimean area, Sevastapol seems to be just an enclave off to the side.  About a year ago, I noticed an old Russian naval map that put the port at the center, and it makes a very big difference.  The mineral resources and ethnic populations are of course factors as well, but if you look at the land taken in the present conflict, there seems to be a good chance that the incentive to do so came from trying to protect the place where they keep all the boats.

Another 19th c. view:

The highlight of recent months was undoubtedly the Comedie Francaise performance in Budapest.  Back balcony, about $7.  Amplified, but still, the Alexandrines -- the verse. (Marred slightly in one scene by the older woman a few rows down pulling open a beer tab to the general amusement of the section.  I imagined her to be an anarchic former actress of the company.)  Not a touring production, a cultural exchange of a recent show.  A brief glance at the distant homelands of the spirit -- 'but to whet thy almost-blunted purpose.'  Looking further back, the Normandy Moliere piece and the Noh pieces at the Transylvanian theatre festival brought similar, and similarly brief, illuminations.

In the depth of the winter in the Jedi city, I survived by purchasing a month's access to the London stage tapes web channel -- just listened to (and occasionally watched) the tapes from the last two RSC seasons: the λεγειν.  And Wodehouse adaptations from time to time.  Preserving the ability to reach into experience with the mind.  We weren't put here just to survive the experience.

 

The analogy is underappreciated -- in the northern hemisphere, southern countries there and southern countries here pose many of the same difficulties.  You must awake your faith. 

 

The mind keeps returning to the beginning of charging admission in the early modern English travelling theatre.  Something happened there, perhaps, when the (already divided) Reformation met the empiricism prevailing on that island, especially in the colder and cloudy northern bits.

There is an epistemological argument for the apotheosis of the currency, and it traces to the beginning of the last century.  Basically it runs something like this -- we are inculturated with old habits of mind that have become unproductive, and led to things like war, papistry, etc., and the best way to live is to do what works, and the gaining of the dollar is therefore the objective indication that you're doing the right thing.  A very darksome view would see this at the root of much of the know-nothingism, the explicit anti-Catholicism prevailing at the land grant universities of the 19th c., etc.   A kingdom of moral ends, that first light of the enlightenment, actually confounds this worship of wealth, so having a moral center is made identical with conceptual and ethical notions about the physical body.  

And this epistemological sense is at the root of the actual glee that some have when seeing others without money.   Avarice has its reasons.  It's just that they're not very good ones.

There's no easy answer.  These truth-seekers and fellow travellers who have been fighting each other, over the last couple of centuries especially, have distilled various necessary elements of larger truths within their fenced-off private domains, and you do have to try to understand everything in order to get anywhere.

No simple highway. 

 

Startup week grocery costs about what they were when I first moved to the Upper West Side.  So, you know, wandering the earth is apparently also a good way of responding to inflation in food prices.

 Perilous times in the city that L'Enfant built.  Always keep an eye on the products launched in August.

 When landing on a market-based, advantage-seeking planet, you have to know how to get where you're going, while losing as little as you can.  The exchange rates at the bus terminal were actually fair, a small spread between the buy and sell points.  Bypassing the half-dozen invites for taxi rides on the way out, I went up to the only licensed vehicle I could see, and he quoted ~$12 USD for a 2 mile ride.  I left without comment, but checked the other entrances, as it was after dark, and I wasn't exactly sure of the way.  Unfortunately, the line of licensed cabs at the doner kebab were all out of service, so I shouldered my bags, checked my compass, and headed off into the night.

As it turned out, everything was safely lit, and I was walking through the town center on a summer evening, so it was quite pleasant.  Got a first orientation (I had looked at online maps before arriving, and sketched out a rough plan of the town) about a third of the way there from a tourist map, and then got my bearings from the Catholic cathedral.  I checked en route, but since I had written down the second name of the street rather than the first, the polite elderly fellow taking out his trash merely gave a friendly shrug, which I returned with a knowing smile and wave. After 2/3 of the journey, I was reasonably sure I was on the correct road, but  had no idea how to mark the right cross-street, so I asked a cab driver at another doner restaurant, who good naturedly gave directions (which were undoubtedly logical for a cab mindset, but pointing back to the main road and saying that it was the next big intersection would have worked as well).  I thanked him, but just before setting out, decided to take the cab instead, at the quoted rate of ~$6, as the evening was growing late.

Then a quick walk around.  ~$8 for 2L of milk, two packages of crackers, three liters of water, 100g of coffee at the convenience store found on Google Maps, then walking about discovered a proper box of health cookies that would serve for cereal (~0.90) and a loaf of sliced bread (~0.50).   

 In the end, the destination was reached with sufficient nutrition.  The costs were unreasonable, but landing in a place is the journey from unreasonableness to reasonableness.  Not to be forced, but to be determinedly advanced towards. 

 Notion: Modernism, and specifically Dewey's democratic pragmatism, as a theory of social domination.

 

"Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.  A long, long time."

#balkans #starbucks #starwars 

 

 

 There's a sort of latitudinal line that you cross when travelling south, when the bus changes from noisy passengers with loud conversations and music and a dour crew, to noisy conversations and loud music from the bus crew, while the passengers grow quiet.  I noticed this in Bosnia/Croatia as well -- and when the bus travels closely to politically contested ground, the music changes, the conversations seem to change in character.  Defining their relationship to the place, perhaps.  

From the plain governed by the country to the north, the contested region here is bordered by mountains, so I understand the almost mythic sense of gazing longfully at the mountains from the flatlands.  On the other hand, even the cities governed by the northern country on the border seem mostly to be marked by minarets.  

Several large fires visible along the route -- midsummer in the Balkans. 

Apolitical, as always, but "Thank you for your attention to this matter" is more than a little psychotic, as tweet perorations go.  

The accent, of course, is on the antepenult.  Perhaps the real point.

 Absolutely exhausted.  Walked around a bit, combining Google Maps with commonsense wandering to secure enough food for the next few meals, which is no mean feat in an ex-Yugoslav city on a Sunday night.  Between a few convenience stores and a late-night fried-things bakery that sold bread as well, sufficient grub secured, at around half the cost of a couple meals sourced from a proper grocery.  

Very strong contrast, not only with the average American city (which, in fairness would me much less walkable) but also with the more Western countries to the east and the north.  It's basically the same logic as going to Wal-Mart all the time when I was working in outdoor dramas in Kentucky -- going to the distant places is much easier when you can handle support and supply issues quickly and efficiently.  The German hypermarkets were my base in the country to the east -- even in the largest cities.  When the means of securing necessities are clear and direct, the complexity can shift to where it's more profitable  -- the thinking, the making, the reading, the exploring, etc.

 Feast of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a.k.a., Husserl's graduate assistant.

Thus says the LORD:
I will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.
She shall respond there as in the days of her youth,
when she came up from the land of Egypt. 

 The most important thing is to think clearly, and to adopt whatever practices and disciplines (or, occasionally, lapses in discipline) serve that end. 

This statement, which is true, is true only because of the limitations in our notions of importance. 

Part of the reason that I've been such an enthusiastic advocate of Girard's theories is that I can see virtually everyone around me living mimetically, because that was how they learned to live.  

This way of thinking would have served me well (and did) as a professional maker of theatre, but the means of making theatre in my country have become industrialized, which is the opposite of organic.  Organic is from organ, work, a form, like our internal organs, which also exists as a function, and gains its identity from that.  The opposite, industry, if you could imagine the pieces of your body for a moment as industries, would be the forms of the organs working in order to serve the others, but without thinking of themselves as part of that larger thing.  Each function of the body would think itself very useful, and sometimes essential, for the body, but it wouldn't think if itself as part of that thing that its function served, any more than a worker in a fast-food restaurant would think himself part of the community of people sitting around him and eating.  In the second case, the form is from a purposiveness conceived ex ante, not function.   

So when an art form becomes industrialized, the roles are preserved, but as jobs.  And often those jobs are given according to corporate favor, or to those who more closely correspond to the secondary purposes of the industry.  Rather than theatremaking, which would happen even absent any scheme for compensation.  (Cf. Demothsenes: "I paid for the staging, while you merely danced in the chorus) rising up into a scheme for sustaining it, the form is created ex nihilio, purposively, by giving a fixed number of people jobs, along with some vague idea of what it was that legitimate theatre should do.

I well remember talking with a NY producer with who employed me for several years as a website editor, and the contempt he appeared to show when I said I would rather play the smallest role on a stage than produce the biggest show on Broadway.  

The urge to make all things new runs deep among those of us driven to the hinterlands of things.  The useful part of that is the increased incentive to look closely, and try with all the force of your being, to understand what's going on, and how it all hangs together. 

To the hardware store to restock some of the kit.  Always restock the central bits in the big cities.  I've walked a mile and back with luggage on a layover once to visit this hardware chain, as it has the perfect bath brush for travel.  

Being the type of person who would walk two miles for a decent bath brush is a a substantial and uncontroversial virtue, I hope.   One doesn't always have to whistle Col. Bogey's March on the walk, but it does help.   

It's very important to distinguish things said in a rational tone from rational words.  this is how the politicians and imitators gain power and influence in organizations.  Look at the mechanism of the thought in the words that they say.  Does it function? 

Notably, the majority of both professional philosophers working now would likely say that, in essence, there is no difference between the two.  But I suspect that they've just exaggerated their notions of essence in order to disagree with the concept of essence.  Much as people exaggerate their notions of God in order to create something in which it would be much easier not to believe.

If you ever need proof that humans as a whole can be used by inhuman forms, look no further than the industrialized cigarette.  

The wise ones open the box, look inside, and then realize that this isn't the best way of using the thing that is wrapped up inside of it.  Excellent way of limiting the pensionable years, in an actuarial sense.  The vaping is perhaps worse.  I carefully avoid those clouds and scents, particularly hereabouts.  The ingredients that are advertised and sought out are bad enough, but essentially spraying an unknown industrialized chemical compound into your lungs is the worst idea you could have, short of injecting it directly into your bloodstream.  

Calls to mind the LDS 19th c. prohibition on "hot drinks."  Especially at that time, there was no telling what it was that was boiling in the percolator -- as Gurdjieff and others pointed out.

(And any point that Gurdjieff and Brigham Young were both making probably merited attention.) 

To the museum of the old Republic, also the mausoleum of the President for Life.  Fascinating place.  Free admission on the first Thursday of the month.  Then to the coffeehouse for a couple hours with Pynchon.  Bridging the worlds.  Two fundamentally different forms of consciousness.  And two ineluctable aspects of cognition, developed within the age in the context of each polis.  

Divided sky, the wind blows high.   (Cf. the two points on the top of the "Non-aligned" monument near the river.)

The important bit, though, now that we're comfortably adrift in in the wasteland of things, is that each of these ways of thinking that dominated the politics of the last century -- whether rooted in the consciousness of present social situation, or aloft with the archetypes of the mind -- in addition to being a certain way of living,  is also a way of seeing the world.  Any society-wide way of thinking is deeply rooted in its epistemic motive.  It's how the people of that time and place looked at the world and developed a vocabulary about it that enabled them to see the world.   

The danger, now that we're past ideology and alignment, is that when we discard these ways of thinking, we're also, sub silento, discarding both the underlying epistemologies and the act of particularizing the things in the world.  It is possible to live in the world and not notice the world.  These politically polarized ways of thinking caused us to look more deeply into the world (I am sedulously avoiding the phrase "things that are the case") and have a more rich and salient experience of life itself.  Life was meaningful for the revolutionary, not merely because it was good to do something to help the others, but also because they had to come to some understanding of the world in order to do that, and to come to that understanding, they had to investigate the world more closely, and think about it more carefully.

tl;dr: Freedom from history can also be freedom from experience. 

 

 Assuming I can get under sail and past the bar in the coming week (wrecks are always far more likely close to the port -- many's the slip..), I will have survived these rooms.  Close traffic, noise, fumes, heat in the first part of it, ventilation too dirty to use. And yet a price roughly equal to much sounder quarters in the past, sometimes in this city.  But it's the tourist season, and I had to book late.  Oddly, the theatres are closed during the tourist/leisure season, so the coffeehouses had to bear the burden of the evening jaunts.  Coffee much more reasonably priced on the western half of the peninsula.  (Which is the Eastern half.)  Henry James talks about the summer repertory of the Comedie  Francaise in Tragic Muse -- deadly classics, staged for the tourists.  But apparently, there's a tradition of festival season in this part of the world, and preparing for the fall, when the city will start up again as itself.

Found it impossible to read, think, write.  I did manage to lengthen the morning runs, and solidify the practice after firming it up as a daily practice again in the last city -- after the disastrous winter in the country to the south.  

"When the water is muddy, I wash my cloak.  When the water runs clear, I wash my head covering."  

In each engagement, conquer what you can. 

 Struck by the iconic hotel at the center of the city, a building I've walked past many times, probably every day when I was staying in the older half of the city.  It's named for a distant capital, but it's of the place.  Much like, perhaps, the Roman theatres were invariably places for stories about Greeks, and The Theatre in early modern London was a conscious appropriation of a Roman/Latin word.  The perfection of the great, distant place, sometimes shifted in time as well -- at the center of the present place and time.

From my yeoman's knowledge of local history, there was apparently a time in which local sentiment looked very strongly towards the UK, and its pananthropos -- Shakespeare.  But the F.O. couldn't come in on their side against the foes to the south without offending the great power to the east.  Additionally, there's the ancient post-reformation shift in trade routes that caused much commerce with the Sublime Porte.  Church-bells melted down into bullets, and sold to those suppressing the revolts in the Balkans.  Metal has its own story.  Much of the steel from the old 9th Ave. El was sold to Japan before the war, and was built into the battleships that the folks from the neighborhood went off to fight.

Motion and becoming. We're born into the middle of the adventure story, and quite likely won't see the credits roll.  But do try to mark the changes, and know them.  

 Interesting figure.  Looked through his official blog a bit when I was visiting the country last winter.  One joke I remember:

A Romanian goes into a cafe and orders a cup of tea.  

"Would you like Russian tea or Chinese tea?"   

"Hm.  Do you have coffee?"

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/ion-iliescu-obituary-romanian-president-who-deposed-ceausescu-f29v6xv9f 

"Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good-fortune deceived not."

(Ben Jonson) 

 Consider the principle of sufficient reason in the context of the development of technological infrastructure.  Only a broad-based adoption of technology could focus a sufficient amount of resources on the central infrastructure.  Perhaps, instead of seeing the end-gadget and the visual images  on it, as an end in itself, the point of the whole thing -- also see it as a mechanism used to tap the resources of the end-user towards the creation of centralized infrastructure.   

Went to the city's castle -- very ancient, has been held by a few empires over the last thousand years.  Extraordinary views out over the plain, which are also visible at the (much smaller) citadel at the opposite end of the insular channel at the confluence of the two rivers.  I try to make at least one visit there each time I visit here.  I much prefer the castles in Transylvania, though -- there's something very discomfiting about seeing signs for lurid exhibitions of medieval torture devices, given the events of the last fifty years hereabouts -- at least in the northern castles, I'm absolutely confident that they haven't been used for warmaking or carceral purposes for a few centuries.  One does get odd vibes.  But I suppose I'm peculiarly sensitive.  I still wonder a bit why people listen to orchestral requiems as art or entertainment.

 'Your righteousness must exceed that of the communists and the national socialists,' perhaps.

Whatever the merits of nature and nurture, the directly proximate environment does shape the person.  The traffic noise, the chaotic sidewalks, the scents of fried foods, the clouds of secondhand vapes.

Wealthier place aren't marked by these objective phenomena, and their residents seem to have a different general personality.  Persistent correlation can indicate partial causation.  Though having a lot of money can do other things to protect one's personality from the vicissitudes.

 This is perhaps why, during the republic, they looked across the river and built apartments there.  (Though curiously, they appear not to have extended the tram lines.)  There is a famous local novel about the old architecture of the city, the protagonist, a romantic madman, looks in horror through is telescope at the characterless housing growing on the other side of the river.  But there was green space, and planned development, and quiet.  These things don't cost that much, except in the context of the band of detritus around urban areas, where square footage is costly, neighborhoods are ad hoc, etc.  

One doesn't seek out sane housing for the sake of sane housing, as reasonable as that might sound.  The housing shapes the mind, and the sensitive spirit. One turns into a bit of a troglodyte among the detritus, vaping, etc.  

To their credit, they make it a point here to build sufficient housing for the population.  I've seen this in several post-communist states.  Whatever the many sins of the authoritarian state, it publicly preached a strong social ethic, and that ethic has persisted somewhat -- a very valuable residuum.

I can honestly say that I never encountered a law professor who appeared to care more for the object of their study than their own personal social standing.  And I was looking rather closely.  

That rule obtains in the academy generally -- the exceptions whom I've encountered have almost invariably been in philosophy or the arts.  

To be clear, I studied the arts to practice the arts, then found things in the field to be a bit off-target, to use the mildest possible phrase.  Then I studied law to practice law, and found the practice of law to be, with similar discretion, a bit corrupt.   When, finally, I turned to the academy, it was largely animated by a sense that it was the source of the fact that ideas were no longer guiding things.  It would have worked, but as it turns out, if you don't think that there is any truth to be found in the objects of study, there's apparently no need to preserve basic truth and honesty in the interpersonal world.  At the end of it, I was basically trying to play baseball in the middle of a fistfight.

Onward.  The old texts are still available, and they speak.  There's also the possibility of making art at some point in the future, and if I ever find a path past the gates of the law, I'd be able to use those ideas to explain a few things.

Locally important feast of St. Elijah -- midsummer heat, associated with the storm, widely thought to be pre-Christian in origin. 

Steeds and chariots of flame...

 Lammastide.