Peculiar, there seems to be some discussion in the local press of acoustic-wavelength crowd-control devices being used during the ritual meditative silence portion of the protest.  [Updated 3/16: Although reported last night by mainstream outlets and the student law faculty twitter, it doesn't look like this necessarily was the case.  Eerie moment in front of one of the state theatres in which it appears that everyone simultaneously decided to get out of the road.  Edit 3/17: Based on the YT videos, it seems things started much further up the road, and the footage near the theatre was a downstream effect, which would have involved a good number of people, even just between those two points.]  At which point, things apparently fell apart a bit.  Odd.  No telling from which direction--could have come from anywhere, in that wide-open space surrounded by tall buildings. The organizers apparently shifted the venue at the last moment from the neighborhood with the crown jewels of the state to the (almost equally iconic) broad, open traffic circle plaza.  Made for rather impressive drone photos.

Even for a neutral visitor, a not inconsiderable danger, though I stayed ensconced in the rooms, safely above street level on the day itself, after wandering around a bit on the eve of the festival, like a visiting foreign king/yogi wandering the camp before battle. Surrounded by hundreds of thousands caught up in the fury of the world as it appears to be.  Hence the Henry James.  Following the thought and the tone of a Henry James novel is the precise opposite of the mentality of the protest -- on all sides, including that of the neutral observer caught up in it.  Basically, a mind-shaped, Tardis-sized room with walnut wainscotting, oil lamps, and crystal chandeliers amid the strife. 

Hegel didn't think much of the beautiful soul--perhaps because he didn't spend enough time talking to Goethe.  Live nobly.

Once you get some distance from the foolish moralizers and the foolish anti-moralists, keeping the body in the possession of the soul, the exterior in the command of the interior, becomes quite a necessary and difficult job.  It is important that the exercise of freedom retain the character of freedom; else it just takes the place of freedom in an always-already-understood world.

Odd to be surrounded by the cacophony of protests on an otherwise peaceful seventh-day.  No idea what role they're playing in the local politics.  Might help those breaking the eggs long-ways, might help those breaking the eggs short-ways.  My only possible point of understanding is the universal human, something to which, by definition, no political faction can lay claim.  Reasoning from this, the tendency of every political movement to lay claim to the universal claim of right is also error by definition.  Heid: we possess speech most fully in keeping silent, and every act of speech is particular, contingent, perhaps necessary, but invariably a derogation of that fullness of being.  There is no originary fullness in logos as logos, or for that matter, eidos as eidos.  But who can keep from thinking or speaking?

Careful to observe neutrality here -- walking respectfully through the midst of the crowds.  But this is a rather remarkable event.  I've been to political protests larger than any number possible tomorrow, but this is something different.  Less a protest than the emergence of a political form.  At least on the surface, there is no spirit of dissentience.  More like a victory parade.

Quite the evening in the capital of the old republic of the south.  An hour or so with Henry James in the Starbucks across from the legislature, then, thanks to knowledge of the alleyways acquired on my first visit (as the AirBnb was hidden within them) bypassed the most impassible of the crowds and and managed to get to the largely empty and brightly lit park by the university for a bit more of the novel on a beautiful summer's evening.  Then back by the side routes.  Small panic at the grocer's, as as the tenner I thought had been squirreled away in the wallet was nowhere to be found, before remembering I had some spares in the vest pocket.  Quite the hubbub.  Broad and general festival.  Vuvuzela vendors doing a big business.  Custom-printed buttons appeared to be the second item in the carts.  Perhaps a means of categorizing political rallies by civility: when buttons are in play, we're a few steps removed from the barricades.

 It's odd -- this is one of the few times during the present peregrination that I've been in a largely Slavic city, and it really does seem to make a difference in people's demeanour.  Like walking down the street in Chicago, as opposed to a small town in the central Midwest.  I'm fundamentally American, but of Slavic/German ancestry and Christian -- and the latter two bits sometimes don't go over well in the Midwest, or in NYC (although for very different reasons).  Here, the people are fundamentally Slavic, and largely Christian, but reaching towards the sort of liberal politics, society, and art that America sometimes stands for.   So one becomes increasingly conscious of the inherent antinomies in these views.  The impulse towards one view or the other might be useful, but don't think that it's heading towards a fundamentally different type of world, in which all problems are resolved.  (With the exception of religion.)

Still keeping half an eye on the neighborhood -- overnight, apparently the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition decided to remain in their camp, which has now apparently gained a row of very large tractors.  (Tractors have some ancient political resonance here, in addition to being very large and useful/frightening machines.)  More interestingly, they've closed the parliament even to the members, which the opposition is claiming to be a violation of the law, which might be a bait to some kind of 1/6 incursion.  No inside, or even personally acquired information -- just checking the news sites to check the odds on imminent chaos in der nahne.  Quite likely not, and the folks who live here will likely have an exciting day that makes their country work a bit better, and I'll likely find few distractions from the neo-Kantians and Henry James.

 Incidentally, if things go to plan on all sides, it's my utterly uninformed and amateur guess that conflict is almost certain.  There's a very large encampment of folks loyal to the Powers that Be just across the street from the spot where several hundred thousand people from all over the country are scheduled to show up.  Quite a cacophony in the neighborhood now, even on a normal night. As an itinerant tourist, my Saturday-afternoon Henry James novel stands waiting for me in a room sufficiently above street level.

Update, it appears that the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition will strike their perimeter and retreat in advance of the day.  Apparently announced a few hours ago.  #notexpert  #justawalkingaoundtheneighborhood

Interestingly, the apparent meeting point for the big weekend rally is the two statues in front of the Parliament -- possibly the first place that I visited when I first visited the city with a touring theatre company some time ago.  Walked over from the hotel after arrival, just taking a first look at the city.   Quite impressive.  Also very suggestive of the project of Enlightenment in these parts.  Two men holding back furious wild horses.  Civilization and culture.

On a practical level, the thing keeping me from the customary early runs is clearly the theatregoing in the evening.  After this month in the city, soaking up as much of the latter as possible, hopefully the return to the early morning hours after the difficult winter will be a bit smoother.

Gently down the stream. Take it easy, but take it.

In the local language, there is a peculiar expression: "academic citizen."  Apparently achieved by earning a bachelor's degree, which is perhaps why the trade in illicit degrees for folks with only a high school education who had risen in the world flourished, both here, and in the eastern (Western) countries of the peninsula.  Also on both sides (I think, though I don't specifically know the institution here), there is the veneration of the academician, which I've also seen in a lot of Russian films from the 70s and 80s.  

Perhaps if these structures of society were a bit stronger stateside, the mechanisms that operated to sustain them might be a mite less corrupt.  Frankly, very few people care about who an assistant professor at a local university is, much less what they do.  But the social inertia, as it were, might have a useful effect on the integrity of the mechanism.  Actors in their bios here, and not just the ones first starting out, mention one or two of their professors, presumably indicating both the lineage and the network of influence.  People generally pay more attention to card games where the chips stand for real money.

 Also, the curtain calls are getting more energetic as the weekend approaches.  Catch phrases shouted between cast and audience.  Have secured a solid supply of food, fresh water and sundries, and I look forward to a weekend of staying out of harm's way.

 Heretofore, the quintessential Balkan Western classical theatre moment was the one-word reply of the Captain to Viola: "Illyria."  (In fairness, the 19th c. Romanian translation likely followed Pope's enjambment.) 

But the closing moments of a (generally brilliantly played) Cyrano, in which a shouted "Sloboda" with fist upraised took the place of "mon panache" (I think) might now stand for the quintessence of the strong local reading.

 There is a pragmatic (in the wider sense of the word) aspect to forgiveness.  Part of the satisfaction, it seems, in doing wrong to people lies in the tie that afterward binds one to the other within the structures of power.  One law professor, and ultimately my guess was that this was ingenuous, would boast in class gleefully about the people who thought that he had ruined their life.  

If you are going to tell your own story, and by doing so tell the story of the world, you have to see that intention, and steer clear of emotionally reacting to the events.  Like Cannetti's "stinger", it will obscure your understanding by drawing you into conflict, and ultimately prompt in you the very sort of behaviour you encountered.  By turning the other cheek, you are maintaining dispassion, and keeping the wrongdoer from exercising that hold over your mind.

The world, which is to say your understanding of all things, is composed of people who do such things, not created by the things which are done.

 So, why are you preaching to the fishes, then?

Well, I'm not trying to covert them.  And I'm also not using them as a practice for trying to convince people in the future.  I am maintaining the state proper to humans.  An active engagement in language, commixed with moral belief.  I am such that the world must remain an active proposition.  And the state of that active proposition, the definition of it in patterns or reliable differentiation, as expressed in language that comes from me, is both expressive and tied to specific things in the world. If someone does find my thoughts persuasive, its likely because I set out to think, to reckon with the world in a slightly desperate sense, before I set out to express, signify, or persuade. My attempt to do so is likely more persuasive and useful than any results I might think myself to have achieved.

It's just a slightly desperate lunge towards the light before we vanish.  To do so is what we are.

Late morning.  Woke, felt out of sorts, decided to give the whole waking thing another go after several hours.  Worked for the nonce, but lost the morning.  

Definitely off-pace, after the winter months in a place where you couldn't really go for a morning run.  

Resurgam requisite. 

 A day of piecework.  Like a philosopher exiled to the factory town who puts bread on the table by taking in piecework from the local factory.  The ethos that distinguishes the day job from the work has served me well in recent years.  And one is grateful to be able to glean a means of survival for the nonce from these industrial fields.

The protests here over the weekend, at least from press reports, look to be rather large.  On the order of hundreds of thousands.  What makes them unique, though, if I can get the reality of it through the skillful social media manipulation that is now de rigueur for wars, protests, and large corporations, is that the event has an almost sacramental character, with many groups making the pilgrimage on foot. The narrative is that the society has crystallized around the student movements, and frequently you hear it stated that the students are to be trusted.  Contrastingly, the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition is camped out in front of the President's offices, and with the polarization of recent days, is treated increasingly unkindly in the left-leaning press and by passerby.  And then there are the signs which don't fit neatly into either camp.  Veterans of the wars, in civilian clothes, distinguished only by their bearing and the cluster of sargeant-majors standing at a respectful distance in the shadow of the monument, as the leaders shake hands with a group of young men clearly a bit awestruck to be in their presence.  Things coming together.  Which is interesting.

What distinguishes this from a large DC protest stateside is that this group at least believes itself to be precisely on the centerline of the country, not the partisans of a certain faction. And with this much inertia in play on a given weekend, and with that inertial mass precisely on the centerline, there's certainly the possibility of mercurial changes in the situation.  Perhaps not coincidentally, the agenda for the legislature on that day appears to be the quasi-secession of the entity to the west.  This comes after a year of shared ethnic congresses, and I think a large meeting under the auspices of the church.  Utter amateur at these things, and with no particular information, but there will likely be hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, positively suffused with patriotism, showing up with a need for some sort of event.  The mimetic need, as Benjamin Bloch called it. Or perhaps they'll just find a way to make their society work a bit better.  Traditionally, spiritual exercises are useful for that sort of thing.

As for myself, laying low is the watchword, and hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses won't be closed for too long.  As an ambassador from no one in particular, I have an obligation to neutrality even greater than the ones thought up in Vienna on occasion.    

Interesting, the actors at the large state theatres appear to be holding up their passports (or a similarly colored leather portfolio, roughly of passport size) during the curtain calls. (Not universally of this country, interestingly.)

Scottish play tonight.  The Balkans serve as a rather effective proxy for early modern Scotland.  Absolutely exhausted from watching it. 

Innards roiling a bit, so I stood off in standing room.  There was actually an option at the last itinerary planning point to rent a studio in a five-star resort for basically the same money, but it was all bed and couches and no desk/table.  Frankly, the mens sana and corpore sano could stand a bit of ease given the long peregrination.  

From my limited travels, I might say that the flower of Islam in the Balkans is Sarajevo, Mostar, Blagaj.  The carvan-sarai, and the Sufi mountain retreats.  The stem is the commerce of Skoder, and the earth is Albania.  I found the flower very compelling and spiritually powerful.  But the month and a fortnight amid the fecund earth of its roots was harrowing.  Almost enough to convince me to leave the strange plants in the garden alone.  But that's arguably not a wise way of gardening.

Perhaps: the Balkans are like a glass poured in the 19th century, in which certain colors reached in from the edges -- yellow from the north and west, white and red from the east, and green from the south.  At the time, these were contingent, moving patterns.  But in the interval, the glass has acquired its temper, and the only way of changing the colored patterns is to fracture the object -- an entity which doesn't at first reveal its own existence.

 

 

One problematic aspect of surviving the extraordinary with equanimity is that there's nothing to dispel the false normalcy.  Things are as anyone might think them to be.

Perhaps the point of pragmatism was always that a society could be effective without attempting to describe, explain, or understand what it was doing.  Understandable, given how socially-held deliberate purposes turned out in the beginning of the last century.  But there is a correlative danger at the other end, perhaps.  

The effective nature of shared social work continues, of course, but, again, reaching to the beginning of the last century for examples, it's possible for an effective society to be not the type of society one would want to be in, if one understood the nature of the event.

Crowds in the city for springtime.  Striking contrast to last weekend, when it was empty -- perhaps because of the protests in another city.  Which might seem to indicate that there will be large numbers in the capital next weekend.  For some reason, going from city to city here seems easier than in the eastern (Western) Balkans.  Just as easy, I suppose, but travelling from the capital there to one of the larger cities in the north is an endeavour, not the work of a morning. Perhaps because of the mountains -- and the cultural lines they created. Local press reports here suggest that the legislature will be in session considering the situation of the political entity to the west.  I suppose the genius t'ai chi move would be for a government of national unity to be declared with some sort of alliance, with the ruling party stepping aside, thrilling the hundreds of thousands in the capital who have been on spiritual exercises of political/(ethnic?) unity for the last five months.  Ides of March reversed.  On the other hand, this is not a part of the world known for adroit acts of political t'ai chi.  More the чай tea.

#amateurspeculation #tourist #ridiculouslyuninformed

(It's asserted that the diacritical alphabet here is the only major alphabet in which every sound is associated with its own unique character, and is unique to that character.  Which would seem to singularly serve the essential purpose of the diacritical alphabet -- the translation point between alphabets.)

The constitution here explicitly recognizes the governing ethnicity, I think, one of the few in the world to do that, while simultaneously guaranteeing other ethnicities full rights.  The national church is a key situs of that identity, which explains the sometimes contradictory politics in the port nation to the southwest.  So the entity's situation, which squarely evokes the great historical conflicts of the region, in the local context, is less a distraction with foreign wars than an assertion of endogenous strength.  Again, just an ill-informed tourist wiseacring.

Will be heading back to Transylvania after the Lent here, for fifty days in the highlands of Galilee.  The mountains to the south were a strong allure, but in addition to keeping connected to the European culture, it seemed ill-advised to stay in a remote mountain village in a country with historical difficulties vis a vis law and order, where a sudden absence wouldn't be necessarily be marked by those immediately around me. In V, in one of Pynchon's anecdotes about the wandering British fellow in the Levant, the protagonist wonders how many more of these pools of city light he would be allowed -- it's important to take the high road, especially given the brigand nature of the times.  Safety, light, and work -- and as much mountain air as possible.