The political bits also a bit surreal, watching the characters drum on the stage, with the streets filled with protesters.  Reminded me of listening to an authoritarian supreme court head talk about ways of thinking about constitutional rights while (unrelated, but chaotic) protests were going on outside the window in the lobby.  The events on a stage, or the thoughts from a podium, by their nature, are more carefully presented, less instinctive, and less based in social imitation.  Laboratories of the spirit.  Holding the nature up to the mirroring.

A rather intense play about a madman, in a language I don't understand at all.  Just your average Saturday night ($5.55).  

Was meaning to skim the novel this afternoon, but tried to make some inroads on the neo-Kantians.

Was quite the decision, between the southern mountains and the northern libraries, theatres, and coffeehouses.  Ultimately, I realized that when I looked at the comfortable earth-tones of the former, I was subconsciously relaxing, which made the choice for the north clear.  Perhaps why the costly vacation experiences (at least in their ads) lack the ersatz comforts.  Preserving the tone and life while in the mountain air.  Which is usually possible, if you take the decorations down and move most of the furniture out of the way.  But any middle ground between the energy of the city and the solitude of the mountain has its dangers.   

The intuitive view seems to be that the corporate form is of a higher order than the state, as its progeny.  But if you read the old constitutional histories of England, a private household focused on its own public image and consumer desire and capable of bringing force to bear as opportunity arose in the mesne holdings far outside of its effective ownership or control was the archaic form of monarchy. 

Perhaps there is no higher form than a consciousness of the totality. 

Much talk in the local press about a march on the capital planned for the fifteenth.  Apparently the intention is that it will be quite large, and the organizers haven't yet said what the plans are for the day.  Jarts and dominoes, perhaps.

 Ides of March...

 First theatregoing, the Sophocles, lost to a quasi-general strike, which mostly proved to be an afternoon out at the cafes.  Which isn't insignificant.  The central practice of the protest has been people standing silently together.  Heidegger: being with another is distinct from inaction. 

Not particularly disappointed about the Sophocles, though I'd usually tend to that sort of thing.  Skipped the production in the capital to the southwest, as it looked a bit atavistic, and I was focusing on keeping things together.  An elevated tone can, at times, be a life-sustaining practice. λεγειν.

The protests from Democrats continued throughout the speech, as they laughed at the president’s talking points and loudly grumbled.

Interesting.  I didn't watch the tape, so it's possible that this was genuinely the event, but it's odd that the laughter and chuntering weren't events in themselves, but acts of opposition as opposed to approval.  If you don't know how to think about experience, experience narrows.  

Read a think-piece on the splinter futurist sect of modest size on a dark-side-Bonnie-and-Clyde run in the states. Noticed that their leader spent some time at one of the Midwestern land-grants where I studied and taught a bit.  Unsurprising--precisely the sort of derangement that comes from a university that has more to do with cable (do we still call it that?) television drama than long hours in the stacks.  I recognize the tone of their manifestos from the papers that I (endlessly) graded.  One of the largest academic libraries on the planet, and on any given day, an infinitesimal fraction of the tens of thousands of are to be found inside.  Much to do with corruption there -- and that sort of thing does have knock-on effects.  The care of souls.

 The analogy might be to a situation in which the Bond villains win, and take control of society, both the large systems of power and the management of small stores and cafes, and then they collectively realize that to hold power, they have to solve these problems which have nothing at all to do with their unending and eternal battle with Bond, Q., et al.  As if a hostile corporate takeover had populated the Yankees bench with nepo prospects.  You're still watching them try to win the game, and sort of wondering if they can. Pragmatism and corporatism. The beginning of the ebb of the state, perhaps.

Perhaps I should take up fly fishing.

 

Western Balkans seem to have gone from sixes and sevens to foreseeable conflict, virtually overnight.  Part of the general unsettling, perhaps.  Though the western part of it is a long-simmering judicial process with a foreseeable timetable.  Peculiar.  Some local press here explicitly linking Europa Resurgent to the contretemps, the notion apparently being that Austria-Hungary et al. are now eager to assert their protective influence in those climes. Big meeting by the local head of state tomorrow noon with an ancient ally, according to the local press. 

There's a haunting image in the national museum here of 'the Germanic horde'.  In fairness, that was before army units had to be Instagrammable. 

Perhaps the world is controlled by conniving folks of all stripes and sorts, continually attempting to do chaotic things in order to gain power, and only held in place by the people trying to do even worse things of much greater momentum and scale who are locked in stalemate above them.  Once the latter destabilizes, and there's no longer a stalemate above, the (much larger number) of people working in lower-stakes situations might see it as their hour.

Apolitical, as always.  I have taken a seat in the grandstand of philosophical self-detachment. (O'Neill)

My only interest is in hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses stay open, but like any good Kantian, I have no attachment to this good, and respect the superior interests of the local folks.  Apparently, the high schools have called a general strike for tomorrow; will play it by ear. Plenty of books and coffee in the rooms, should the worst come to worst.  

Generally though, the city is basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election.

The primitive shaman shaking his rattle around the head of the patient prefigures, and perhaps results in, the neurosurgeon with his scalpel, millennia later.  The attention, the will to accomplish something, is being preserved within the human condition within time, or perhaps acting within time, and being understood by the people within each time in a different manner.  An inner realism.

Perhaps every aspect of the human exists in every age (and culture), however obliquely. 

Well, the new administration seems to have achieved its goal of increasing the defense spending as a portion of GDP among the NATO allies, but I'm not sure that the tactic, i.e., pointing out that they might need guns facing the other direction, was that wise.  

In the last country, fleeing to the Bulgarian mountains seemed like a rather good idea.  (And it would have been, but one pays for rentals by the month.) But with the shift in mindset that followed, the painted churches, soft cheeses and mountain air are deferring to a more northern purposiveness.  Entirely a creation of the mind, of course, but I'm feeling some regret about not taking the southern route.  Almost a female presence.  Echoes of an ancient Athena? 

The enemies of Socrates.  The ones who defended appearances so emphatically.  Ultimately, they did so out of love for their own lives.  A faction and a manner of thinking perhaps presently in the ascendant, ubiquitous and systematic.

In every journey, there is the grace of arrival.  The day or so to set things up.  Usually, in automobiled American suburbia, this involves spending the day walking to the shops to secure the necessary goods.  And then the deeper shifts start.

On one level, I'm going from forty days or so in a city that has some peculiar parallels with Odysseus' underworld to the first Christian, then republican, capital in the region.  On another level, I'm going from one set of rooms to another.  Opportune moments to emphasize either frame of reference.

But the lesson of antiquity seems clear -- don't run off the roof, chasing the departing ships.   

ψευδο-οριζοω.

Gently down the stream...  God willin' and the crick don't rise.

 

 The last port of call was rather difficult in its own way.  Certainly the closest to third-world conditions I've encountered so far.  The westernmost point of the travels; the pre-Roman name was Epidamnus, which made them slightly uncomfortable.  Like the Yugoslavian cargo port/resort city to the north, one of the ports across from the principal trade routes emanating from Bari (St. Nicholas, translated -- an iconic saint for commerce, and international travelers).  Odysseus ventures into the underworld at his westernmost point, and there were a few uncanny experiences.  The rental turned out to be about an hour's walk from the cultural sites (e.g., old Roman amphitheatre and forum), and that part of the world in February is no one's notion of an idyllic place to be, so there was much reading at the kitchen table and baking bread.  The streets outside seemed not to have been washed in a long time, and there were plenty of (amiable--a characteristic of the south) strays about, so no runs, and no walks into or back from the cultural center after dark.  I showered and changed clothes after each journey out, even to the grocery a short ways off -- the usual practice in southern Europe a century or two ago.  The small grocers seemed like the places that I would seek out, rather than the garish national chain, but given the short stay and the non-EU food regulations, I thought it wiser to stick to the highest path, however inviting the small shops might have seemed.  And after discovering a few unwanted visitors in the morning muselei, I adopted an airtight-container-only rule for the food.  But there was an old-fashioned, 1950's-America type kitchen in the old masonry building, and a firm table, so it proved to be a good place to work for a bit.

Philology, particularly literature studies, is neither a science, nor an art, but a philosophy.  Peculiarly, though, it's one that customarily adopts the prevailing philosophy uncritically as its own.

 Don't mind me, just padding out the chapter in Bartlett's.

Was nervous about the political situation, but things are very calm, rational and economically thriving.  Basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election. The odd black banner or (Cyrillic, notably) graffito. I learned in Mostar to pay attention to the graffiti in order to suss out the (hyper-)local mood.

Food prices a bit high.  There's clearly an effort to make staples available -- you just have to comparison-shop the chains to find the full array.  Troublingly, things like Eurocream seem to be generally made available.  Le pate des bourgeois.  Quite the contrast to the easten Balkans (which are the Western Balkans), where food prices are very, very good at the moment, even though the politics are similarly convoluted.  Like the Greek actors, I travel freely between warring city-states, but like every 'tomato tourist', I keep a cautious eye on both the prices and the politics.  On the rare occasions of looking up from the books.