Stopped in again at the philharmonic to eavesdrop the Handel a second time. Perhaps my imagination, but some of the funereal tempos in the second half (αναστασοσ) seemed to have been tightened up. Perhaps there's a tacit understanding that guest conductors use a bit less interpretive freedom with the weekend subscriber crowd. Hadn't slept in quite some time, though, so listening to the pece while trying to keep on the right page of the Goethe biography I was finishing proved surprisingly challenging. (Not all neighborhoods in the city have book-return boxes, so there are designated "book-finishing" zones to keep the knapsack light.) Might be my last visit to the concert qua lobby -- it's a lot of bother to go through to sit in the lobby and listen to the house sound on a distant speaker. Much more of a concert event than a drop-by cafe at this point.
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To be absolutely clear, the present visit, on a continuum between holiday jaunt and death-defying salto mortale to the edge of the swarming crowds circling the abyss of darkness -- well, all told, I'd tend to go with the latter category. Still a bit hopeful, though as exhausted as I've ever been.
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Notion: one reason people are a bit lost -- their vocabulary. The set of words that they use to describe things in the world tends towards simple existence, rather than focusing the mind on the purposes of life. Our manner of speech is dispositive. Vocabulary is logos -- you can't express a second logos using the words of the world, because each word relates to every other word, whether that be inference or deferance [sic]. Perhaps the reason the people are wandering like lost sheep too oblivious to realize that they're lost is that their purposes have been extinguished by implication.