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.