Well, that was a difficult journey, and I wasn't expecting a difficult journey.  The rooms in the last place weren't exactly a firm foothold, for several reasons, and the straightest line of the transit would have meant going deep into the offline, informal world.  But I stayed with the online vendors; even so, the first leg was in an under-ventilated small mini-bus, which was odd.  I generally follow the journey with compass and map, and at one point we passed an intersection at which I knew a turn would get me to the destination in 100km or so.  But routes are routes, and so we headed on to the capital city.  

My three objectives were to change currency at favorable rates, visit the national church's cathedral, and pick up some cheap boots from the German chain.  Noticed an interesting thrift shop near the station, and stopped in -- found a brilliant autumn-weight outer-layer leather coat for five Euros or so.  (I am the odd Catholic vegetarian who eats eggs and wears leather; the penultimate has a moral imprimatur, and the last is a practical necessity, as the synthetics (short of the very expensive synthetics) don't last nearly as long.)

Then to the money-changers, which took some circumambulation, as I didn't revisit my notes before setting out.  Then to the cathedral, which was simply odd.  The historic center of the city is marked with archeological exhibits and passageways beneath street level, and the historic buildings at street level.  The difficulty is, given the possibility of communicating underground, the traffic planners apparently decided that there was no need for continuous access aboveground.  Fences everywhere, no crosswalks.  After doubling back around to the other side of the street to see if there was a passage there, I simply looked at the steeple for a bit and then moved on.

Then the boots -- my notes ended up corresponding only lightly and fancifully to the reality of walking down the street,  so I eventually turned back around, increasingly exhausted, and with rain clouds louring overhead.  In the event, the same large, cheap shop that furnished the jacket at the beginning of the say furnished a solid pair of Chelsea boots that look like they will serve for the nonce -- Vibram soles, good leather, well stitched. And less than fifteen Euros.  When the places change so drastically every month, both fiscal and packing concerns mean that you can't really get decent kit -- but if you look for the solid things that will serve for the nonce, priced at a level that doesn't make a month's use unreasonable, it's possible to survive the day with fair kit.

 Then to the train -- having my suspicions about how well things would go, I picked up sufficient groceries for a few days (light and basic, like the pioneers on the wagon trail -- oats, rice, etc.).  Then, the train to a rural station for a long layover -- interesting characters there.  I've learned a lot watching the behavior of stray dogs at stations in the south Balkans; the random overnight souls of the stations are no less instructive.  Without a vision, &c.  Found that my powers of forced consciousness might not be as strong as they were a few years ago, and unconsciousness took me like an electric charge two or three times.  

Then to the narrow-gauge rail for the last leg of the journey, always an interesting means of travel.  Same battles with consciousness, given the long day walking around the capital city.  But then we reached the mountains.  There were no cabs at the station, so I took my luggage and food supplies in hand, and made the four mile hike up the base of the mountain to the resort areas.  At this point, the exhaustion was rather intense.  Cleaned up the apartment, set up my things, and put the work table together.  An immensely difficult journey, but we are creatures who were made to do immensely difficult things.  Unlike those who are part of a societies created in order to do some specific work in the factories or building industries, the immensely difficult things that the free human being sets out to do can awaken the spirit.  Unlike the fellow exhausted after the day in the mine or the factory, my exhaustion wasn't in order to serve a certain social objective, or please those in power.  And I receive no safety or wealth from it.  At the end of my strength, the only thing I have attained is the successful completion of the difficult journey, and the possibility of continuing the work.  It suffices.  It will have to. And so the spirit awakens.

sunday afternoon

My last in the city; walked to the old city after Mass. Crossing into the old city is very much a change of worlds here. No visible antipathy, but the change is extremely stark. Hopefully this isn't because the two sides managed not to fight a full-scale war with each other for the last few decades. War, like death, brings clearer minds. But there's no need to go seeking either of these things out.

Walked up to the old fortress -- the elevated ground atop, like the fortress of the last city, is the point of the place (and in the current state of conservation, the only open part of the place), but some of the old Roman stones (I assume -- large, no mortaring for many years) are visible towards the back. The elevated ground above the river -- so many died to hold or attempt to gain it. And now we moderns just walk up the hill. Hopefully, though, being able to do so in peace doesn't make it any less meaningful. In peacetime, we must create our own meaningfulness -- or the peace might not last. Without a vision...

Then to the old adjacent church with the famous carved ikonostasis, but it's closed on Sundays, apparently. Someone was standing in the doorway though, and he let me in to take a quick look at the courtyard. Quite idyllic, especially relative to the environs.

I haven't had much much luck with the national orthodox churches in this part of the world. I can't fault them for that -- I am not of their εθνοσ. And churches need walls in order to be churches. Without such things, churches would not have the motion and energy to converge towards that which they converge towards. My guess is that the great danger of the Eastern rite is the quietism, and loss of energy among the people in the search for spiritual power. But the function must be made explicit: Fishers of men, not keepers of the aquarium, as an American Franciscan once said.

 This has been a very peculiar visit.  The first few nights here, I woke more exhausted than I had been when I went to sleep.  Strange dreams -- a large battle in a city filled with civilians sometime in the future.  Some run-ins with strays and a peculiar muscle strain (in the spot where Jacob was wounded in the wrestling with the angel, ominously) meant that I skipped the run of for a week or two in the middle of it, and that's never a good thing.  Eventually, I found a decent path for the run, and the joint healed enough that I didn't feel as if I were pushing it too far.  

Instinctively, there was a strong regret that I had left the last city, which I like very much.  And my first encounters with the locals and the area put me on my guard a bit.  Eventually, I realized that (at least on this side of the river), things are more like the southern coastal country of the old republic.  You find the neighborhood shady bowers and rest there, rather than heading into the bold designs of downtown, which are there to be experienced, but not really lived with.  At least not yet.  The monumentalist aesthetic is only a decade or two old, and although it's something to see (Bucephalus will not be rendered more honorably anywhere), it can be fatiguing. 

None of the bookstores appear to have any English translations of the local authors -- the English spirit is facing distant lands, apparently.  But there's a very bustling mall culture, and the housing is generally quite fine; as with most countries in the Balkans (there are exceptions), the standard of living is higher than the corresponding wealth percentile in the more prosperous nations.  I keep looking up into these apartment windows, mostly buildings built in the last 50 years after the earthquake, and imagining shelves filled with Hegel.  But I don't think they do that anymore.  Back to the admin tasks, so I can do some reading of my own this evening.  Lector, cura te ipsum.

pynchon

Times critic a bit harsh on the new Pynchon. Underestimates ATD, I think. It has its longeurs, but equals GR -- quaternions against the old vectors. Introduces a new dimension, let's call it time, that makes the other coordinates bear relation. The episodic cartoon gains depth. Introduces the narrative to the fullness of life and mortality. ("Fullness of life, this is mortality. Mortality...") P is a genre of one -- geneous, from the seeds of 49 and V. Still haven't read SL.

vocation thoughts, cont'd.

I've formed many reasons over the years for avoiding the clerical state. When I actually worked through it, it seemed that I was looking for sacraments and books, and found psychological formation and pamphlets. (And having done a three-year conservatory master's degree, I'm considerably less naive than most about the first of the two.) When it came to filing a formal application with one order after a year or so of discernment, I actually took it with me to the research library, and stopped just as I was beginning to type, reluctant to sign on with the chaplains to the soi-disant minor aristocrats against whom I'd been struggling for years in the city.

It's as if you have a small lamp, and you realize that yours, through some error at the factory. is apparently a bit different than the others. Or perhaps you have a different relationship to it. But the condition of making this your social role is that you have to give up that lamp in the formation -- a bit like the Marines, in a way. They're not looking for tactical geniuses at intake. I think I would have been an Anglican priest in a heartbeat; I haunted the back of the choirs at evensong for many years, after Mass at St. Pats or the parish that morning. But we Romans have more Gregorian strictures.

With the passage of time, I see the cost of preserving my own ways. Those who leapt into the boat have been able to focus their lives on the work, precisely because of their agreement with society to play a certain role in society. Absent those comforts, deplorable in themselves, but occasionally useful for the work, the focus can dissipate, the engines of the heart and mind lose their plasticity, etc.

I shouldn't complain. I'd still be unwilling to sign on, or wear a habit that defined a social form that those who wind up wearing them have very much wanted to participate in all of their lives. It's best to become a priest if you want to become a priest, rather than doing it because you think it might be useful in your relationship with the divine. It is a participation in a social form that can be useful for the work, but you have to want the social form as well. Perhaps wanting the social form is even more important. God doesn't need you to take a certain form. Like Hegel's spirit of history, he moves in mysterious ways, his wonders (with complete idiots) to perform.

constitutional

Took a walk up the mountain to the 12th c. monastery of the local national orthodox church. Took an apparently unconventional turn on the path, and so most of the walk up the mountain was on narrow, winding dirt roads. Much garbage about, so perhaps it was the old road up to the settlement, before the wide asphalt road was laid. Reached it shortly after midafternoon. There was a historical sign near a small wooden door in the wall, but everything was closed, so I walked across the street to a bustling tourist market, with a few (mini)busloads shopping away. Asked one of the staff where the monastery was, and he pointed to the door on the wall. You could look over the wall, so I went over and looked at it for a bit. Presence, not sensory perception. We Catholics have excellent training in this. Then back down, but along the wide road. Paths are always easiest from the destination.

Actually my second time taking the difficult way in recent religious peregrinations. In Mostar, on Good Friday, I had heard that there was a service at the mountaintop cross, so I walked up from the Franciscan monastery, quite a difficult climb, and then met the crowd at the top, who were coming from the wide asphalt path winding up the other side of the mountain.

eternal return

In a moment of candor, I will say that a certain analogy has recurred to my mind several times. On a journey, a fellow, call him Jonah, is thrown into the water. He then not only manages to tread water for an extraordinary amount of time, but manages to get some solid reading and thinking done while in the water. He was tossed overboard near some trade routes, and the constantly passing cruise ships and cargo ships come to see him as part of the scenery. Occasionally, he'll have a brief philosophical discussion via semaphore with a passing crew, but the nights are a bit more difficult, as he needs to keep out of the way of the enormous ships. Eventually, he realizes that in being seen as part of nature, the logic of those around him has become that he should simply exist, to the extent that he exists, by doing what he is doing now.

Well. That was a difficult realization. For a while he tries to work the extensive list of his degrees and his experience into the semaphore conversations with the drunken passengers on the balconies of the silently passing cruise ships, but they don't seem to realize the significance of the claim, and are soon carried from sight.

In primitive societies, crime, most famously murder (cf. the sociological work Kelsen did for the UN ( I think) in the mid 20th century), is seen as just a part of nature. To the extent that you can defend against it, you do so using magic rituals; this is perhaps the source of the grotesque punishments of early modern courts. The realization of individual culpability and victimhood, which are based in individual moral autonomy, is not intuitive; it emerges with the progress of society. When we are civilized, we rise to this awareness. When people see an extraordinary situation as simply "the way things are," society has slipped a bit, and we're not far from some rather dark ways. Inscrutable events can only be addressed with extraordinary means.

-----

Stopped by the city museum. Peculiar place. This city is a very old situs, and there are some interesting 5/6 m. BC artifacts. There was a natural catastrophe about a half-century ago, and the city is largely presently defined by its reconstruction. Very interesting to see a relic or two from old Austrian/Ottoman days, not to mention the subsequent republic. Apparently once a world center of opium production, known for the potency of the stuff, three or four times that of comparable crops. Perhaps not entirely irrational to think that after many generations of abundant narcotics, even a century or two later, there might be a lingering bit of cloudiness in the social mind.

Clearly, limited curatorial resources. A 2/3 c. AD Venus Pudica, life-sized, still in the metal travelling box-frame, secured by a manacle around the neck. Nearby, some ancient pagan bas-reliefs on lead plates of perhaps a tutelary spirit named after the place (from what I could parse of the label). Layers of history, some of which perhaps aren't yet entirely in the past.

 The UN speech was fascinating.  The Machiavel in the heart of the Republic.  And both require the other -- the unseemly, freely speaking individual, and the Republic, the harmonious relation in which the interests of the individual are thought to be identical with the shared interests.  

And all else aside, and as close to the edge as the current politics might be coming, someone coming to the center of the world's leadership and musing for a bit on the construction materials of the building is quintessentially American.  Old Scottish empiricism and plain speaking.  Perhaps, despite everything, some small hope.

 Sorely tempted to break the parsimonious piggy bank that this journey on this budget has required, and just get to one of the northern cities I've visited on these travels, get some coffee, sit down at the table, read a bit, and then take it from there.  But as the range of events in the solution set would be greatly reduced by doing this, I'll hold my peace, and make a stand in the south, at least for the nonce.  Which is wise not for the obvious reason, but because even the largest of the more northern cities on the peninsula are still just further on down the highway towards Christminster.  

A distance of a nutshell is the same as the distance of a continent.  Establish the right relation with where you are, as well as the places around it, near or far, alone or in groups, that form the mysterious constellation. 

peculiar thought

For some reason, the thought occurs to me that if I had been able to get to the theatre festival in Transylvania and see a few of the Noh pieces from Japan (as in the past year or two), my focus might now be a bit more crystalline. Like an early modern courtier relying on the yearly trudge to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury in order to keep the mental focus for the rest of the year. Theatre does create these small dependencies, even for distant and obscure connections.

To take a line from Gandhi, I will have to be the Noh theatre that I had hoped to see in the world.

 https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/27/henry-miller-notice-to-visitors/

after eden

It was a difficult life, and one doesn't want to be nostalgic for the mud, but life was undoubtedly much more meaningful when I was making theatre in the city. By perhaps a factor of ten, if meaningfulness can abide ratios. The questions were much more difficult, and the answers much more rewarding. But it's a rather closed world, and can turn against any random person very quickly, and without a thought. The initial thought, after the two or three years on the outside of things, was to get a solid base for everyday existence with the law degree... and thereby hangs a tale.

It is good to notice the differences in the scale of meaning, though. Like going from a Fowles novel to a 90s televised drama. The spiritual stakes reduced, even when the empirical risks increased. On the bright side, Prometheus had a bit of a torch to see things by when he went back down. False light? Perhaps. But light. Prometheus brings the fire, not the perfect color of light.

"More light!" (Henry Miller)

listening to festival tapes #workmuzik

Enescu didn't just use the melodic, he defended the melodic.

There was an interesting dance/theatre piece at the opera house there last year about the Romanians in Paris at the turn of the last century. Very intriguing. When their classical theatre was shaping itself in the 19th c., all of the actors trained in Paris (and brought the French translations of Shakespeare with them), and much of the machinery came from Germany. (Also the source for many technical innovations in the UK.) Culture moves from place to place. The culture of a single place is simply a ritual. It becomes a culture when it starts to bear relation to other worlds.

One of the memorable things about my hike through the mountains around Sibiu (aside from the large, angry shepherd dogs) was coming down the mountain and finding myself in Cioran's hometown. Had been reading his stuff for a few months. The more controversial ones are impossible to find in translation, even in the largest research libraries there.

Did the AM run today, though the recent twinge is still a bit strong for that sort of thing.  Sort of like sending in the injured star player in the last few minutes of an important playoff game.  The run was most necessary.  Health is a means, not an end.  Literally, I suppose.

words writ in water

Still trying to fix the indexing problem with this blog. Apparently, there's a rogue robots.txt file somewhere, but nothing's visible to my console. Makes even the sitemaps unparseable. Not that big a concern, just a peculiar annoyance to encounter, as the blog is hosted by the search company.

Still a useful appurtenance to the website, though, despite the ticking of the clock and the work-study fellows patiently waiting at the back of the room with the erasers.

Quod scriptsit, scripsit -- at least for the nonce.

don't pine, it kills

That quote is from John Crowley, a favorite novelist, and it's good advice for the most part. Nonetheless, I am pining for the northern parts of the peninsula, thinking of the theatres and music and coffehouses there. But the path, for several reasons, needs to keep to the south for a bit.

And miles to go before I sleep...

the water jug

D.T. Suzuki relates the Zen parable about a student who told his teacher that he didn't seem to be making any progress in the spiritual life. The teacher told him to place two jars of water outside his door. Each morning, he was to empty and replace one of them, but leave the other as it was, day after day.

The lesson learned is probably sufficiently clear from that.

Not unrelatedly, one of the thoughts I've had to steer my mind most firmly away from is the salary scale of my law school class year. Those who were admitted past the thresholds of the firms then are doing quite well now. For the record, my grades were quite good, my bar passage scores (self-study) quite high, and my degree first-tier. Even given this, though, the important thing is the art. To use a rapier analogy, I've kept the weapons oiled and well-practiced. A bit like a swordsman who didn't have the right connections in the world of international fencing, but still has the skill and discipline. To most minds, this keeping up the skill would seem useless and illogical.

Do the useless and illogical things. Logic, for the most part, only comes from use, and use only arises from logic. But this is true only of the usual, average path through life. If you stand outside that, you must commit yourself to the useless and illogical. If the art is true, then the art can still be good.

Despite the apparent lack of progress.

apolitical thought

There is perhaps a peculiar danger in a government guided by the minds and wills of the people.  This puts the minds and wills of the people in play, as it were.  More subject to political forces than otherwise.  No one needed to make a serf believe that a certain politician would make the best king.  

There are some egregious things going on with the state now, but there's something odd about them.  They're predictably egregious.  Reliably egregious.  Masked, unidentified agents capturing people, taking them to prisons controlled by the second sovereignty, the federal sovereignty, not the one usually enforcing law and order in the state.  Egregious, yes, but obviously so.

The standard jibe against the current president in NYC society was that he was a rodeo clown.  When thoughts like that float down from the court, think about them carefully.  A rodeo clown distracts the bull while the workers are doing the important things, the things a bull would not like if he knew about them.  These egregious things are bad, yes, but what else might be going on?  For example, how might they be making the lists of people to pursue?

I'm just stating the obvious.  I oppose all bad things and am firmly in favor of the good things, but I don't think such a predisposition has a voice in the government at present, so I'll keep my peace.  I used to read the party platforms before each election (you had to request them by mail), but now I recognize that that sphere of discouse would be a waste.  Lear to recognize the important things, and focus your mind on them entirely -- ruthlessly.  

But occasionally, state the obvious. 

 

mast year

 https://www.thetimes.com/article/ba001e9f-d5cd-4d39-924c-36e2a592d4ce 

 

 

 

equinox approaches

The equinoctal winds seemed to start here early last week. At first, from the south, with the characteristic scent of industry (not the good kind) that seems to come with those winds. Which, based on my few weeks' worth of experience, also seem to be associated with cold fronts. Strong reversals, nights just a bit colder.

And the egg balancing. It doesn't work any better on the equinox as a matter of physics, but as a social norm, it expresses the day quite well. Beliefs aside, it's simply what we do.

I could stand to be back in the city, picking up a paperback in the east village, and taking it back to the apartment or to a coffeehouse, or even the small college towns in Minnesota or North Dakota where I decamped during the plague years, perhaps wandering through the 1950s-era library and then taking the dusty Heidegger or Nietzsche back the apartment. (The Minnesota rooms were actually great for this, since the local library could reach into the largest state university library research collections via interlibrary loan. Got thoroughly caught up on the modern Russian novels.) But it seems I'm travelling through the southern Balkans (I'm much more partial to the bits above the Danube, or even further still, above the mountains, tbh), so I must find my existence in the manner of the place, or at least in the understanding of it. I must live as one lives, among the local ways, because these ways actually exist. Grounding yourself in the present place and time in order to live -- an essential practice for those who go to sea in a sieve.

Equinoctal unrest. And in the far, or perhaps not so far, distance, approaching winter.

Manet nobiscum, domine, quoniam advesperacit.

political pessimism

The age of the Machiavel, as opposed to the age of the Republic. All well and good, but the difficulty comes when a hundred million people start to imitate that.

The cynical view: a mad, at times apparently imbecile, rat-catcher appears to be willing to burn down the city to drive out the rats, or at least unaware of the means historically used to avoid conflagration, and in the shadows, the old rat-kings are making war.

Rather good time to decamp, I think. Were it not for the war, exploring 19th c. wooden houses deep in Siberia, and reading Kant and Hegel by lamplight might be the order of the day.

I would stay and save the Republic (the famous epitaph: "They did not despair of the R."), but reading Heidegger on a park bench is a notoriously ineffective means of social change.

Gently down the stream.

local costs

The prices are peculiar here. Clothes and dry goods about twice Amazon rates, but groceries about par with the last country. Cheap theatre/music tickets are about twice regional norms, but still a tenth of USA. Part of it might be that they seem to usually price the whole house at a single level. Online/retail outlet ticketing a bit rough, but that's par for the region.

The clothing and goods prices are odd, though. I don't see how the locals could afford it. There is cheap retail (H&M, etc., which not every city has, but the pricing is comparatively high, even against the countries to the east.) Suspect that there are other retail mechanisms (though there doesn't seem to be the market culture of the last country -- essential to master if you want decent socks at a fair price, not in the negotiation, as the first offer is generally within reason and well under retail, but in knowing which of the booths has a stash piled behind the boxes) or discounting.

morning runs

Still off these. I've certainly travelled through places where it wasn't safe or clean enough to go out between dawn and the early risers, and this isn't that. A combination of mild injury, some mild difficulties in the surroundings, and something I can't quite put my finger on.

Gently down the stream. Stream permitting.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437.5.0.pdf

  

 Actual message: youtube.com/watch?v=wWhrs0gJsps&

The event still has the power to reveal. 

 ---------------------- 

I once read a fun interview with a seasoned wedding photographer, who talked about how he can always tell which marriages are going to last and which ones aren’t. It’s the way the bride and groom act around each other, apparently. Looking bored during each other’s speeches is another key tell. More on that shortly. 

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/special-relationship-maybe-but-if-it-was-a-wedding-youd-be-worried-d97wbpksk 

 

 

international public law

Reading the think-pieces around the two big conflicts can be a bit dispiriting. Having become a commentator, or a publicist, or whatever they're called these days, the writers write pieces saying what the law of nations should be, and then use them for partisan purposes.

The law of nations is precisely what nations have done under necessity, and whatever inferences you can draw from that to the present, with the presumption that things should remain the same, and parties should honor their agreements. But everyone always acts according to necessity. You can't bind a nation in a Lockean or moral-contract sense. Nations feel no guilt, and treaties are frequently "un-signed" these days.

If you're trying to make an argument for an extension of existing law, you're better off trying to predict what nations will agree to, and then inflect that a bit, rather than making an argument about what the law says in itself, so that you can then flog the other side with it if they take the other course. Eventually, that diminishes the power of the idea of international law, which is the most valuable part of international law. It took centuries to build this up, and a lot has been lost in the last five years alone.

Unlike the law of a nation, if the nations don't presently observe a certain precept, that precept no longer exists as a principle of international law.

after eliot

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

comparison

Imagine moving to a small town in America in the 1950s. The town is distant from the capital city, and has its own distinct culture. You arrive in your wood-paneled station wagon, and ask around about employment. After some prying, people begin to talk about who the powerful people are in the different companies, who you should strike up friendships with, do favors for, etc. You ask about simply applying at the offices, and they give you a sort of sideways smile.

That's the way things are now when looking for a white-collar position, and to some degree, even for blue-collar work. It's not the way it was twenty years ago, so I have to assume that it's even more distinct from the paradigms of early 20th century American life. And no one talks about it, for obvious reasons. One's chances might be significantly damaged if one were to suggest that "networking" might be a euphemism for a way of working that wouldn't have been unfamiliar to the criminal syndicates of a generation ago.

Focus your mind on the thing itself, which has a reality distinct from the pragmatic social practices that society uses to structure itself. We weren't put here just to get by -- the point of your existence is to do something real.

Another late night, and into the morning.  Sufficient is the day -- and occoasionally its appurtenant hours.

What I thought was a substantial muscle twinge from the run seems to have mended surprisingly quickly.  But it's close enough to the joint that discretion might be the better part of valor.  

Gently down the stream.  The ramparts of Elsinore are no place for tomfoolery.

Interesting.  The event still has the power to reveal.  Small thing on the scripted bits, if memory serves, the UK monarch doesn't tend to identify with the union jack.

  

 

Tried to get back to the early runs yesterday.   The strays proved amiable and friendly, and there was much less dust on the river path, but a bit of uneven pavement has likely put an end to those adventures before breakfast for the balance of this stay.  In context, I've successfully negotiated the same in Mostar and Bucharest for months at a time, so this isn't the UWS entitlement-happy indignant call to the city about a stray tree root.  My own error, of course, the end of the run was a bit late here, so I was trying to negotiate the early office crowd at the time.  One can be a proficient trail runner, and one can be a proficient city runner, but proficiency in trail conditions in the city takes real skill and care.

Up past two AM on various tasks.  Sufficient is the day, but sometimes a bit of stoppage time is required.

The center is most definitely that discipline of the enlightenment that one from the east would associate with national socialism, and one from central europe would associate with the commissars of the historical dialectic.  Neither would be correct, of course.  But that is the way.  The ineffable lightness of being might work in Prague or Warsaw, but in the lands of the south, one must steer a straighter path.  Perhaps the same danger that Gauguin decided to make a virtue.  Southlands.

  

 Sometimes, I have the impulse to find a room and just read an Iris Murdoch novel from start to finish.  Usually, I channel this into reading something more productive, such as a philosopher writing about philosophy rather than a philosopher writing mass-market fiction.  

It's good to understand that we sometimes pine for senses of things, not the things themselves.   

 Interesting -- the country to the east is livecasting their big classical music festival (which would be well outside the budget for this peregrination, were I there).  

I've been very miserly with my ticket purchases.  The general theory has been good theatre and music for $5-$8 per night.  I remember, also in the country to the east, perhaps my first stay there, there was a classical concert I very much wanted to hear -- the pianist had been a close friend of S. Richter, and she had come to prominence by winning the competition in the hall in which she was performing, and now returned to it at the end of her performing career.  But it was just a bit over 20 Euros.  I did make a point of noticing the hour when it happened, though -- I was staying less than a mile away, and I listened to a Richter performance.  

Something to do with the meaningfulness of sacrifice, perhaps.  Marking the time.

 One good thing about the last country: Sbux at 1990s prices.  $2.50, and then sitting and reading for a couple of hours in a bright, air-filled room with interesting things outside the window.   Unlike the country to the east, where an Americano would have set me back over $6.

It's not loyalty to the brand, or the material substance of the brew (except for the fact that I'm more confident about the hygiene of preparation and the source of the beans), it's genuinely having the place in the city where you can get a coffee in a fresh paper cup from the counter, watch them pour it, and then sit in a bright, airy room for an hour or two and read.  (While everyone around is insta-telegramming their milkshakes.)

The local custom in this country, the southern coastal country of the old republic, and the mostly Muslim nation just to the north is small, dim airless rooms, or close patios with a lot of shade and greenery and cigarette smoke, where coffee is served in mugs.  It's a legitimate form of comfort.  Hygge, perhaps.  

But it is not my way.  And I am not for all waters. 

In the darker places of the region, you can understand the agnosticism of the cities vis a vis East and West.  The point is to get to the light, and the work of the day is to get closer to the light, and transmit more of the light.  Faced with a decison between the resources of a distant superpower and the connection to a regional center of civilization and and culture, whatever the political alignment of that city, perhaps part of the deal is that choosing the first option means that spiritually, the place will have to make do for itself.  Sufficient is the day.  No simple highway.

Taking things on a simple East--West dichotomy in this part of the world is like reading a roadmap when planning a hiking trip.   There's also the topological factors to consider.  Elevations.  De profundis.  In situ, these things mean much more than the reality suggested by the simple colored lines. 

the gauntlet

The native American tribes sometimes used a punishment called the gauntlet--they would force the prisoner to traverse, in parallel, two lines of people attacking them. Some tried to run, and were generally unsuccessful once the first solid blow was landed (at least according to the historical novels of my youth). Similarly, some tried to single out one of the attackers; this usually worked in the novel, but I have my doubts as to how it might have worked out in the field.

Having traversed a few ritual rites of training and passage that resemble the practice, though, I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether I understood the nature of the exercise, reading novels in the wilderness about the wilderness. (Yes, that was our practice.) Perhaps the purpose of the exercise wasn't to punish the dangerous enemies of the tribe, but to identify them.

 I've consciously followed a sort of geometric pattern in these Balkan explorations, and the correlative to this, just as the proportion and length of the fretted string has a correlative in sound and the tension of the harmonic, is that I now have an inner attunement of sorts, pining for the next step in the journey.  With autumn, thinking about the northern cities, the theatres, the music.  Not as ends in themselves, but it's easier to work and think when you're going to a production of Hamlet that night that has more than a parochial sensibility, and is being staged in the context of the work at the best European theatres.  (That said, a truly great production of Hamlet would only have its parochial sensibility, and it would have that sensibility completely.)  So I pine for paths, not places. and with the coming of autumn, it's the thoughts of the north, and the cities.  God willin' and the crick don't rise.

The European project is the basic attunement of this journey.  It would be much less costly to wander the resorts of the south, or the ancient temples of Asia, but I am clinging rather tenaciously to a few lines of thought and work in the West.  Listening to the consecration bells broadcast every morning, to a handful of souls, from old cities and colleges to the north.  It would be possible to decamp for awhile deep into the East -- a few major philosophers quietly did that after ww2, and focused on translating the sensibility of their work, but they were masters, and had their own work well in hand.  We of the West do well to keep to the West, or at least as close as circumstances allow. First, keep the paths of the mind alive and functioning.  While making the occasional journeys of discovery.  

Very strange LNOP.  Extended, maudlin sendoff for a well-connected soloist retiring in her 40s, and then someone apparently thought it would be a good idea to turn a comedian loose on the organ between the national anthem and the song of fellowship.  If memory serves, the latter used to begin without the orchestra.  Or perhaps that's my memory cunningly suggesting the ideal.

 On the other hand, a comedian being turned loose on the great instrument in-between the national anthem and the song of true fellowship is perhaps a true reflection of the times. 

Interesting piece on Woody Allen in the Times.  Living, in his old age, across the street from the anhedonia of his youth.  Interesting detail on the dinners with E. -- not proper meals, more telephones and computers.  Rings true as to some of those types.   Not the preoccupation with business, but feeling the need to call it a dinner party.

The best advice I could give would be to always focus on the thing itself, and the struggle to understand the thing itself, and yourself as someone whose task it is to understand the thing itself.  You'll then be able to perceive when the folks around you aren't concerned with things as they are -- or might be.  Otherwise, you might not realize the diection the bus is heading.

 νῦν δὲ λογικός εἰμι: ὑμνεῖν με δεῖ τὸν θεόν.  (Epictetus)

Λογικοσ--of the logos, and of legein.  The mind not as some abstract capablility in negative potential, but that which brings us into being.  We speak, as birds sing, to have our being by giving an order to things, and separating things that are ordered together. 

 -----------

 Review of a new biography of (The Young) Tennyson in the Times.  There's an anecdote about the time he processed into the Sheldonian to receieve an honorary degree, unkempt as usual, and one of the robed dons in the cheap seats called out, "Mum wake you early, dearie?"   

 

 

And News Quiz returns for the start of the London season.  Somehow it's already mid-September.  And Last Night of the Proms tonight.  I remember, in the days before ubiquitous wi-fi, walking up and down a subway platform on the long commute, deep in the outer boroughs, trying to cadge a network to catch a few mintutes of it live.

When I was in those years of constant auditions in the city, I actually made a practice of listening to PMQs and the BBC parliament coverage.  Seemed like a good way to get the news without being drawn into the labyrinth of mediation.  If word could reach the chamber, the topic was probably important, and I'd rather listen to the words that the MPs use to describe it than the writers and television reporters.  The λεγειν. 

There's a universe of promptings that you can tune your electronic device towards.  I've always found it more useful to use it to eavesdrop on the events going on in worthwhile places, as opposed to enjoying the device as an end in itself.  

#postprandial  #fridaynightisgoonshownight 

 

https://archive.org/details/TheGoonShow1950to1960/internal+mountain.mp3

 

Ave Maria

The feast of the name of Mary. Instituted when Sobieski's news about lifting the second siege of Vienna (more coffee for us) arrived in Rome, paraphrasing Caesar: We came, We saw, God conquered. After wandering the Balkans for a bit, these sentiments are a bit more comprehensible. There are three great historical winds here -- the wind from the West, and Rome; the East, and Orthodoxy; and the South, anciently the Sublime Porte, but Ataturk's republic is still a living force in these southern countries. Possibly, there's another wind from the north, anciently the Saxons and the protestants contra the Habsburgs (when they arrived to lift the siege, treated none too kindly by the local Catholics), and now the industrial developments with loud German shepherds, and late-night classes at the Goethe Institute -- if you look in the window, you can sometimes see the bleary-eyed locals (no doubt after working two jobs that day) scrutinizing the whiteboards.

At present, I'm in the lands the government of which Demosthenes excoriated in the Philippics. It's a peculiar place. They left the old socialist southern republic before things degenerated into war -- from the chatter I've read, apparently they realized they had little interest in the fight, and would simply be used as soldiers by one of the larger ethnic groups. But avoiding the general war of the 1990s didn't make for an idyllic republic. The capital appears to be a placid but divided city, much like some others in the region, with one religion on one side of the river and the other on the other. Just a punter's guess, but perhaps the more recent conflict in the city is from the fact that the population growth after the recent nearby war didn't follow that pattern. The capital is marked with baroque architecture and statues, many from a development push a decade ago, and from a decade before that, there's an enormous lit cross on the mountain above the city. The folks across the river undoubtedly have very firm notions on statuary. (Latin churches in this part of the world seem to make a point of having a statue or two out front, and sounding the bells at the canonical hours, even if the doors are locked at the time. Cf. Ivo Andric's novel, in which the arrival of the French diplomat causes the Christians to wonder if flags might be allowed.) And adjacent to the large cross on the mountain, there is an even larger tower, apparently a telecom tower, which closely resembles the central tower in the Muslim-majority capital city to the northwest. The rocks and stones themselves.

Travelling through these places does bring some very strong dreams, and it does force you to define where you stand in relation to these questions. Someone could live their entire life in North Dakota and never encounter these forces, and there's many who would say that it's not a bad thing, and perhaps even the point of the New World. But it's been my experience, as someone from the New World on a bit of a peregrination hereabouts, that the dreams in which you have some sense of the angels will come even if you are a fast-food and television-reared child of nature amid the suburban comforts. (Kant's only statuary was a bust of Rousseau. It's a beginning.) When they occur in the context of world-historical forces, though, these dreams and intimations have a context within living experience. And perhaps the recent political experience of my country shows the dangers of these intimations of higher things when they arise without any context in the social life. The message can get a bit garbled, and a soi-disant modern Sobieski can launch a crusade against a DC pizza joint, and then make a last-second detour to the Capitol. History is an attempt to synthesize the higher truths of experience within the social fabric. And this can bring the wars in heaven down to earth, either with actual armies and actual pain and death, or in the form of a bridge laden with statuary, almost like primitive charms against the other tribe, lining the paths between the villages.

Rousseau didn't imagine that the children of nature would be dispassionate blank slates, or mild animals content to sleep and feed and work in the factories. This simplicity of primeval (or perhaps primordial) nature was a notion of greatness. The point was that this greatness came about through simplicity, and (long before Weber), disenchanting the people of a few old social charms. And Kant took this notion as a beginning. We of the New World can't pretend, in our innocence and prosperity, that there aren't ancient spiritual conflicts, and occasionally the wars in heaven are being fought out on earth. And perhaps the real danger is that we, with our own personal sense of the numinous, and of faith, might leap into these conflicts precipitously. Where wars of religion are being fought, they often have as much to do with the earthly elements of the two societies as they do with religious doctrines. The reine tor from the New World doesn't intuitively understand that these higher personal truths he senses so clearly have been translated into social experience over long centuries of conversation and daily life. Jumping into a battle because you recognize a device on the flag is a bit foolhardy. Instead, the traveller, knowing their own spiritual sympathies, is best off carefully observing the way these inner sensibilities have been translated into the social fabric, and making peace where it is possible to make peace.

I say this sort of thing with trepidation, as it's a bit contrary to the present television-oriented foreign policy of my country. But I have lived in these small towns and cities, in the north and in the south, in North Dakota and in midtown Manhattan. There are hundreds of millions staring at the televisions and imagining that they understand. Life, though, is (if I can make a sectarian point of my own) much closer to the care and encounter of sacrament than the sudden insights and identifications of textual analysis. America wields a rather big stick these days, and the policy decisions often play to the television narratives. But the ancient truths of the world are inscribed on the wanderer's staff. Every encounter is transactional sacrament, not a merely a vindication of simple and intuitive truths you always already knew.

Hold to your faith, and look carefully.

 The greatest danger is not the other's δυναμισ, but the inability to preserve your own ενεργια..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramble_Bank 

The problem afflicting all of the superpowers, perhaps: the necessity that the politically unacceptable but meritorious folks be able to secure a minimal existence within the civilization.  Beneficient corporate purposiveness has its antinomies.

Before the conflict started, I mused about heading to Siberia, with its 19th c. wooden buildings preserved in the cold, to find a small university (somehow with English language instruction) and study and live simply.  Infinitely preferable to being caught up in what passes for the political world presently.  Dostoevsky wept when he read Hegel's pronouncement that the remote place that he was in was outside history, though.  But if the centers of things are caught up in false ways of thinking, perhaps it is better to live deliberately.  History is the consciousness of history.  If, at the center of things, only those who don't understand are allowed to play a role, then perhaps the nature of history (as we know it, a relatively recent vocabulary for parsing experience) itself has changed.

Back to the books.   

Still off the morning runs.  Has led to a more civilian rising hour.  Just going with it for the nonce.  Inauspicious place for the early run (the city has many interesting things about it, but I think even its partisans would concede that it's not California in that respect), and resting the ligatures a bit after a month of lengthening the morning course in the last city.  (Up to six or seven miles, I think. Incentivized by the fact that I had to run out of the urban areas to the idyllic forested parts by the rivers.)

Separately -- my route took me past the museum of contemporary art there, which apparently has a practice of playing exotic and threatening bird calls in the mornings to keep the flocks of crows away.  Strange how an organization's purpose can be reflected in all of its works.  Hegel: the cunning is more than the conscious. 

I'm a very big fan of that city.  Much more civilized than comparable cities within world powers.  Non-aligned. Big military parade next week, though.  I spent many evenings at the sbux across from the redesigned space in front of the parliament, and the redesign of the street really does give a Red Square vibe.

But as for today, no run.  When I return to it, I will return to it.  Now that I am not doing it, I am not doing it.

"The most important thing is not to be divided."  (Grotowski)  

re: Morning Runs

Still off these for the nonce, for several reasons.  There are times when the light brigade should charge, and there are times when the light brigade should refrain from charging.  

[In the background, from their various tents, the Light Brigade strikes up a winsome refrain of "All Quiet Along the Potomac" in the flickering light of the campfires.]

https://aktorpoet.com/2019/09/12/9-11-email/ 

 

 It would be useful to be in a place where I could run before dawn without the strays and the pollution, a gym at hand, basic healthy food (coffehouses, perhaps, as well), churches for meditation and liturgy, and a world-class research library to work in all day, but the only scenario that would provide that, if I were to try to jump now, would likely not allow for a place to rest the head in the evenings, so I reckon I'll press on. Though I did mull the prospect.

In the larger view, many more things would be useful, of course.  The fact that these things come to my mind indicate that the mind's provisioning task is revealing the nature of the work to be done.  

So -- work towards these things, to the exclusion of others, to the extent that circumstances allow. 

 Notes for something Kafkaish, cont'd:

A protagonist, a bit adrift, attempts to compose the events of the past into a recognizable history, but encounters considerable difficulty.  Perhaps he is the child of civil servants, and knows that confidential government work basically destroyed his parents and his family, and also he knows that, after he left their home, networks of corrupt people made short work of what he thought to be his life's work and then two subsequent attempts at a career in the learned professions.  The question, the thing that keeps him from understanding the story, is the degree to which these things might be connected.  Is it the nature of the country and society that such things happen, or did something happen within the world that encompassed both events and made his experience unique from the others?

Knowing the story seems to take on added importance, as he senses even the smallest, least remunerative opportunities closing themselves off to him outside the world of the corrupt networks, and the darker contacts and context of the old home.  Fathoming the reason for the vanishing of the light -- a peculiar impulse, perhaps.

At any rate, an interesting piece of fiction.  

The point might be wondering at the urgency of knowing such things, when the knowledge would seem to be of little avail.

 

Don't say that the unwritten rules are unjust.  Act justly, and know that the world of unwritten rules will speak against you in the gates.

 

 

From my limited understanding of the present national politics, and my personal experiences in several spheres, I'd be inclined to say that the most salient thing about the present executive is that this is not an outlier or an anomaly -- across the two factions prevailing generally (as against each other), this sort of sensibility seems to be prevalent.  And, not incidentally, each offers a world-encompassing explanation sufficient to constitute a comprehensive political ontology for its followers.

I have no way of knowing how many other wanderers there might be.  Perhaps I'm the outlier, and the republic is entirely healthy with the single exception of the experiences of one of its citizens.  But these experiences would objectively suggest the possibility of a more prevalent difficulty.  The presumption is properly against the anomaly.

I actually feel a bit like apologizing to each of these settlements, as it tries to draw me into the sleep of the place, and I assert my inward ways against it.  (I'm off the morning runs for a bit, for several reasons.)  It's not like I'm holding off, hoping to fall into the spell of a greater city.  The attraction of the large northen cities on these travels is precisely that it's easier to stand apart from things there, and think and work.  Even in my home city of a few decades, I've deliberately lived, like many of the full-time residents there, at some distance from the madding crowd and their various comforts.  The trick is to appreciate the flame that has drawn the forest to the place, without following the moths, and trying to cast yourself into it on arrival.

And yet -- each place does have a message that it is straining to express to the traveller, and it is possible to listen for those things, the things the place wishes to be known, and to try to understand them. 

 

We were the first class of the conservatory (now in the top ten worldwide, by some rankings), so there were some difficulties.  I stayed out of the fray, and just worked on soaking up as much of the work as I could.  The higher elements, mainly the classical elements (and listening to those concerts and rehearsals were a small part of that), have leavened the other things over the intervening times.  Conservatory is about planting seeds for the coming years.  Mix in a few redwoods.  Cedars.  Eastern pine.  The parts of it that have fallen away in the course of the years were lesser things from the beginning.  There were one or two very passionate but craven teachers, feminist politics, all the right PC ideas, etc.  Those teachings won't even endure, let alone prevail.  The more careful work of the art lasts.

Frequently attended his concerts and open rehearsals during the conservatory degree.  Post-Szell, Cleveland has consistently been one of those rare Midwestern arts institutions committed to careful, historically meaningful art, despite all its old European implications and entailments.  Apparently connected to Bonhoeffer as an in-law, which I hadn't known.

https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2025/09/christoph-von-dohnanyi-visionary-conductor-who-elevated-the-cleveland-orchestra-to-global-prominence-dies-at-95.html 

On days in which you survey the employment listings, and absolutely everything about the situation makes it seem like you have about as much business (or interest in) looking for a position as a random method actor who has done a few years of Shakespeare in the park (note the lower case) has of seeking admittance to an elite Hollywood bistro filled with lunching power-brokers assembling projects, and guarded by several layers of criminally conspiritorial types, from the bouncers on though the front of house folks -- on such a day, do not send out the CVs.  

Time and tide might not wait, but they do have their turns. 

Interesting concert at the small hall of the local philharmonic ($6).  Postwar western-Balkan ensemble, mostly new-music, but mixed in with some of the romantic repertory.  The latter actually seemed to be their strength, interpretive freedom, sweeping emotion, wobbly pitch at times from the low strings (which I've noticed everywhere in the Balkans -- perhaps they hear the instruments differently).   The paradox is that the type of musician who would be very strong in the romantic repertory, for these same reasons, is conceptually drawn to new music.  

The (excellent) hall is very crisp and bright -- with the romantic swooshiness (in the best Rortyan sense) of the pieces,  it was a bit like watching a melodrama on a kabuki stage.  Every fricative rasp of the strings as clear as daylight.  Very interesting. 

 The Miami Vice move in the Carribean was flagrant under any standard.  So why no reaction?  Much to do with the use of unrestricted drone warfare in neutral nations ovr the last two decades, I think.  They've simply taken off the fig leaf.  

When bad things come, they make good use of the bad aspects of the good. 

Meanwhile, in the streets, the War on Wilding continues. 

 Saw in the news that defense(dot)gov had been redirected to war(dot)gov.  (Code is law.)

 When I tried, it, Firefox told me:

The page isn’t redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

###

 

Somewhat miraculously, the neighborhood hubbub diminished, and the workspace was quite idyllic for several hours.  Managed a solid 30 minutes on the task, though, before I was distracted to necessary admin planning and due diligence.  Tempted just to stay at the desk into the evening, but there is an obligation to the place.  So, off to the city center, and I'll hope that whatever Friday charm fell over the place will return.

With every new vector introduced on the path, there comes the risk that you will find that it has led you into climes uncongenial to the specific work at hand.  At that point, commit to dispassion, as it will be necessary on the long arc back to the known winds of the trade routes.

It's undoubtedly a pleasant place for the people of the place, but I don't seem to have hit it at the right angle.

Bit of a slough of despond.  I have set the tasks, though.  It's a simple matter of keeping myself at the desk and doing them.

Pausing the morning runs, at least through the week -- several reasons. 

Noticed that the city's national theatre (which might be the national theatre, though that's usually not the case in the Balkans) was doing a play that I remember reading as an undergrad, and the sequel to which I actually saw on Broadway when I was doing summer stock in Massachusetts.  But then it become cultural phenomenon, the HBO version, etc.  Decided that as an American, I didn't want to investigate that American incursion into the neighborhood.  Sort of like the fellow you knew in college whom you grew to dislike, and then you see them from a distance when travelling.  No need to force the acquaintance.  Looking forward to catching one or two of their other pieces while I'm here.

Felling a bit like the mad scientist orbiting the planet from a distance, plotting his grand strategy, yet somehow always the same distance from the planet.  Must be sure to give the areas of the orbit their due, though.  These are stange and interesting lands, although I don't want to dissipate the energies by turning away from the central work and just calling the whole exercise an extended gap year.  There is work to be done, and I have it in hand.  

Heu, quam vicina est ultima terra mihi.  (Ovid, also in the Balkans)

 AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp 

Thursday.  Which I know from the arrival of the TLS in the email inbox (de minimis promotional rate).  Like oil running down the beard.  The web interface is terrible, basically impossible to read all the way through without opening a few dozen seriatum tabs in the browser, and then it's in random order.  The UK seems on a mission to destroy its internationally influential websites.  Speaking piecemeal to the nations. The OED was revamped a few years ago, making it basically useless for many purposes.  The BBC radio sites have been a complete mess for the past several months; the idea appears to be that they're geo-fencing almost all of the content to the UK, with some content available after a lag of a few weeks.  (Perhaps this informed the recent shifts in In Our Time, which would no longer be available same-week worldwide.)  

At any rate, with the publicly available snapshots of the first few pages as printed, and the scattershot piecemeal  web interface, it's possible to meander through the Weekly Reader, and get some sense of the gestalt.  The best way of thinking about the TLS is to imagine yourself as a great Arabian lord standing on his balcony in the evening, and a series of bedraggled urchins sprint into the courtyard and shout garbled versions of the interesting things going on in the other palaces.  They're trying to seem impressive as they recite their speech up to the balcony, but the real task is to look past them to see if there's anything worthwhile in the thing they're decribing.  One very useful bit is that the reviews will sometimes dismissively run through a list of the old scholarship, which can give you a good reading list.  

The consistent ideal for the rooms on this peregrination has been a bright, open minimally furnished place with an abundance of fresh air and sunlight.  Ideally, sufficient cultural life in the city--theatre and music, usually around $5-$10 per ticket, as the market hasn't been artificially constrained to make it a luxury good, and the state/foundation support goes right to the art, rather than building the marketing mechanisms necessary for selling the luxury good.  More basically, the ability to run in the morning (pace air pollution, dogs, safety).  Research libraries in the area with some collections in English have proved useful.

The local ideas of happiness, though, seem to enter on "cozy", heavily furnished and decorated spaces well insulated from air, and occasionally sunlight.  I wandered through the main residential developments over the weekend, and was struck that even in the mountains, they build close, cozy spaces in insular communities.  Much the same phenomenon in the country directly to the west that was also part of the old republic.  The materials of brutalism assist in this.  They become vine-draped caves rather than portals to the light.

Eluding local ideas of happiness is the first, and necessary step to escaping the local sleep.  Put me in a cozy, hygge room in the center of the hobbit village, and I will light a small lamp, devote all my energies to focusing the mind, and wait for the opportunity to leave. 

Just reading the reviews of the TN in the park is very depressing.  They used to do good theatre there.  Of course, the same can be said of the city.  Now, it's just a means of repeating the sensibilities of the television.

Incidentally, after much mulling, I'm more certain than ever that in the letter and the gulling conceit, we were meant to hear "cross-gartered" as wearing a cross, and "yellow starchings" as the ruff.  The joke is that M misunderstands.  Both the starched ruff and the cross would have been provocative political symbols.  (And possibly "Lady of the Strachy as misprint for Stark(ch)y.")

Nowhere in the variorum. 

Quite a week, last week.  For some reason, absasmurfly everything that could go wrong from an admin POV did go wrong.  Including, most significantly for my purposes, an unforced error or two.  

By the weekend, was reduced to what a Victorian prime minister might have called a state of mild nervous prostration.  But decided to observe the American holday by sleeping in after a placid Sunday, and now it's back to the fray.

Absolute discipline.  Some people might call my approach characteristic of national socialism, others might call it characteristic of a Soviet commissar.  The choice in those instances would be revealing of the speaker.  But it is necessary to have the intensity of focus and being that was deivided between those two (and then reconciled, as Rory noted, at an extended academic seminar called the battle of Stalingrad).  By divine edict, Eden isn't an option.  Find the grace.