The priority is writing which is valuable in itself, as opposed to working with the manner of hoping to be taken up into some industrial application of the writing.  If everything were to vanish overnight, the work would still be not merely a good thing, but a mechanism expressing a necessary manner of thinking, for which the text is more residuum and source than substance.  

It's a scene study class, not an audition monologue.  And in the city, you can go for years sustaining the work in a good scene study class.   

The peril is that of the parable of the buried talent, safeguarded through the period of difficulty.  But, much like the scene study class, only by preserving the ability to think and write does that thing continue to exist in the world every day, and keep the possibility of making things arise, should the opening appear.

But making text, perhaps much more text, must definitely be the order of the day.  While continuing the pace of reading and annotation.  Like Aquinas dictating treatises as he attended to household matters.  Adorno, Auerbach and Benjamin teach this -- from their situations, when the public world was very much against the type of person that they were.

If the Blessed Virgin were to appear, and ask me if I was happy, I would point to the work that I was doing and indicate that it was necessarily my happiness to survive in this manner.  Less Faust's "Stay, thou art so fair..." than a figure in El Greco's vision of changing light, attempting to remain conscious of it, as opposed to slipping back into the oblivion of life without understanding or perception.

The national socialists were champions of industry, envisioning a mechanized continent that had heretofore slept centuries underneath aristocracy.  And perhaps one moral to be drawn from the event is that an understanding of the social order that requires only a portion of the population for not merely the accomplishment of its purposes, but the full completion of its purpose, risks the types of things that went on just under a century ago.

 I've become increasingly certain that the corruption in society comes from the belief that the notions that generally keep society from becoming corrupt are thought false.  On an epistemological, ontological, or even ontic level, if someone believes that ultimately the only real meaning to their words is the effect that they have on the social dynamics of the group, the game's simply over.  If one side on a football game is trying a new scoring strategy, and the other believes that the game is simply the cover for the forcible acquisition of this bit of turf from the political control of the host city, the belief that the game isn't actually occurring becomes a true claim.  Beyond simply clapping for Tinkerbell, the position of conceptual realism, that there are mind-independent aspects of distinctly human experience that justify standing against the collective order, requires that the moral priority of a claim isn't subject to critique.  "Here I stand, though I can do not this."  Quixotic, but necessary.

 

 

 

Personal context: When I headed to a small apartment in North Dakota as part of the plague peregrinations, on the predawn runs around the city, just south of the airport, in the fields between the airport and the university, there was sometimes an immense while jackrabbit.  Noticed it before the snows, and when there was a foot of drifting snow on the ground, noticed it as well.

 

 The difficulty with confronting corruption in a society under the spell of pragmatic philosophy is that the malefactors, when challenged, make arguments with the form of reason, but these arguments cash out, to use William James' pungent phrase, as either claims that they are within the norm, or as statements of loyalty to the norm, which is precisely the claim made by the people who have persisted/survived and asserted more closely held notions of right.

 The two recent challenges to the soul (the soul being the animating principle that shapes the forms of the fleshy bits and suggests things for them to do): the old Kruschevka in the country to the east, and the country to the south.  Old ghosts, things of earth.

 Which is not to say that things shouldn't exist.  I have a sense that, in the event, every aspect of the human kaleidoscope will  be necessary.  Cultures and faiths of the South that seem very earthy and linked to human power might provide a necessary grounding as the technology of the developed (the term indicates the action) nations grows increasingly apart from the human form and the sort of existence that the human form has on the planet.  The green party might yet prove essential.

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

After a day at the table, I have a new theory on the low-frequency noise.  A fragment of the acoustic spectrum of the trams, but without the vibrations, with the apartment being sufficiently above the street so that it's not recognizable, and perhaps on some sort of a harmonic with the intersecting rail lines. It doesn't explain why I only noticed it in the last few days, but it seems the most likely explanation.  Or, you know, it could be the invading aliens here for our 1950s rock and moonpies.

Onward.  

 

Computer troubles of the evening mean that this (otherwise spectacular) day is to be slogged firmly through -- all tasks, no detours or frolics.

 

 (And, to be clear, it wasn't a special trip -- these are the blocks around the current set of rooms.)

 Incidentally, as a matter of academic interest, after wandering around a bit in der nahne, I have a pretty good guess as to the kinetics of what might have happened with all the folks on the street last weekend.  Given the Prime Directive, will save it for a captain's log once I'm out of range of the local civilization (which will likely be some time after I've left their star system).  May all living beings come to enlightenment.

Just as I was preparing to sleep at a time that would have allowed a good morning run, the computer went on the fritz, requiring several hours of rebuilding.  Still very much in the ragtag-fleet mode.  Wing and a prayer, occasionally sans wing.

"You must download, and I must sleep..."

 Aha.  The occasional pulses of low-frequency noise are almost certainly coming from the building, somehow.  Perhaps something to do with the heat, as the temperature has gone down in the last couple of days.  Very eerie sound, but good to know that it's something local as opposed to odd in the city at large.  Possibly some steam mechanism -- no idea how those things work here.  When, before this last visit, I read a recent Russian novel that used the community's shared heating network as a plot point, I thought it was the author's invention.  

Relatedly: cheap pasta over a low-power hob is a tricky skill, but one that must be mastered for digestive health.  Raw wheat isn't generally what the body hopes to gain from the meal.

Bit out of sorts and behind the clock.  The muscle memory of plodding through the end of winter in the last country, when I basically went back to NYC time, is persisting.  While it was a mistake to venture there, the coming spring must be put to good use.  

My best guess on the odd sounds of yesterday was that the tractors used as barricades in the protest park were either having their engines repaired, or being loaded onto other trucks.  Definitely atypical.

Take it easy, but do take it.

 And another half-dozen times since noting that. Low-frequency, bursts of a second or two, like when I was living on 10th avenue and they were excavating the new water main  some distance away.  Directional (turning the head affects it), very low-volume, goes a fair distance into the room and through shutters without diminution.  Likely either construction noises or aliens come to wreak vengeance on the species after some imagined insult in the SETI signals.  On the assumption that it's the former, planning on enjoying a good dinner over a philosophy podcast.

Peculiar.  From the news reports, the opposition has declared a day of noise, and is going around banging pots and pans and whistling (only the latter in evidence locally).  Oddly, perhaps due to some trucking or freight work on the nearby protest site, there have been a half-dozen or so instances of rather loud subwoofer-type noises in through the window during the day, lasting about 3-5 seconds apiece.  

Cupola of the legislature a short distance away lit in red, rather than the UV-violet of recent days--perhaps a sign that they're back in session.  Will continue to keep my ears to the ground, as it were, and if necessary decamp to another capital or a bit further away from the center of things.  Steadily on.

 As noted, being in the middle of a city ennervated according to appearances is a bit contrary to purposes, but one manages.  Part of my distance comes from the fact that the mechanism of the political action here, the social tying-together based on the things everyone knows to be true, the sense that 'we're all in this together' is, in my experience a mechanism of corruption in my home country, especially in the Midwest.  And the universities stateside, outside the technology-based areas, have become a bit corrupt and politically craven.  So while this might very well be a valid local mechanism (the notion of 'academic citizen' is foreign to the US), I am keeping at some remove from things.

Whatever the merits and necessity of this action within the world of appearances, the world of appearances is precisely the mechanism that I've been fighting against for some time now.  Within the appearance, somewhere, in every instance, is the thing itself.  And only then do you reach the useful thing.

Patronal feast of the home archdiocese and cathedral.  Ancient monastic teetotaler, somewhere to be found within the festival of freely-flowing beer and music.

Whenever I have to spend the evening in crowded and underventilated balcony or orchestra stalls, I have the urge to spend the rest of the evening absolutely alone with a book to recover a bit.  The whole reason I got onto the stage was that it was much less crowded there.  

I honestly do find theatregoing unpleasant; this is why you'll usually find me in standing room, if it's available.  (Not at the Met any more, for some peculiar reason.)  There's no contradiction there.  The ability to make theatre and the desire to be in the middle of a crowd are completely different things.

The purpose of this month was as much theatregoing as possible ($5/$6 seats at the two prominent houses in town), and that is proceeding apace. The dojo will shift, inshallah, in coming weeks to evenings with a bit more of the scent of the lamp.