These are important mysteries. They indicate, among other things, that the ones who understand the nature of the time are attacked by those who by their actions attempt to serve the will of the time. Read, and tremble.
The mode of modernity, that trope of 'being with it', that emerged a short time after the decades of intense industrialization, might yet prove to be a very insidious thing. The reason for this is that it displaces the the general sense of how it is that things hang together -- the canvas or background of cognition and social form. The basic premiss is that the introspective stillness is replaced by a doing, lifting the individual into the energies of encounter. But my question is whether we then have the same disposition towards our own judgments made in the context of this energetic engagement, or whether we unconsciously devalue these second judgments, however useful they might prove to be in the social encounters, as not being our own. Even though we persist in maintaining the thought, and think that we have done our task in the context of the time by doing so.
Perhaps we have retained the power of judgment, and simply aren't using it. Sowing some doubt as to the secular world might therefore might be, specifically in the context of the present time, useful in a more broad sense.
Balkan Triduum, cont'd. The international train leaving Budapest was delayed until after midnight, so there was plenty of time to study the rafters, have a bit of bread and milk from Lidls, and work out which of my ebooks I didn't want to finish. (Knowing the location of the German groceries is an essential first part of learning any city.) The Dacia going to Vienna, on the occasions when I've taken it, has used open cars, as opposed to the closed compartments that become very trying for the visitor, as the locals tend to turn off all of the ventilation and seal up the doors and windows (before sometimes taking off their socks and shoes and putting them up on the seat). This is why I swore off Tito's train, until I found out that they can call the yard to find which cars had open seating. So it was a very, very bad ride in to Transylvania. After about the halfway point, I just sat on the folding panel in the passageway by the window, and tried to come as close to sleep as I could in that position.
Come morning, I found myself in one of the historical centers of Christianity in Transylvania. Found the old fortification walls; noticing a steeple just beyond it, I climbed up, my travelling kit in bags on my back. The first building was an old wooden Orthodox church, with a lively surrounding of flowering trees and chickens and roosters running around. Stood outside and listened to the liturgy for a bit, then walked over to massive Austrian fortress, 18th c. gates, with the informational sign pointing out the gap in the equestrian statue above the gate where a leader of a peasant rebellion was immured. Walked a bit further in, found a section of the old Roman road, and glimpsed a bit of the city beyond.
Then, back to a train (open car) for the last leg of the journey, passing many small mountains with flocks of sheep on them, being tended by a shepherd who usually seemed very intent on his phone. Walking directly over after the train had arrived, I arrived at the massive ancient stone church at 3:00 PM, and did some private work and meditation, before checking into the local rooms, cleaning up, and rushing out for a production of Hamlet at the city's Hungarian theatre. Very lightly attended. It seems that Good Friday evening services are more the case here than they are in the Latin West. Given the previous two nights (staying up after Traviata in Belgrade to pack, the above-mentioned bad cars added to the international train from Budapest), I could barely keep my eyes open at parts of the play). I'm a believer in seeing some theatre between the services of Friday and Saturday evening. It seems to ground things. The paradigmatic memory is a production of J.B. Priestley's I Have Been Here Before in a Saturday matinee in the East Village.
Balkan Triduum begins at St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest. The bus from Belgrade allowed me to catch a bit of rest after packing and cleaning through the night, or whatever was left of the night after walking two hours back from the Traviata. The 6:00AM bells from the nearby Franciscan monastery chimed as I walked out the front door of the building, and then another two hour walk to the new bus station. Made it to the minute.
When I arrived in Budapest, I headed right to the baths, under the rule that when sleeping overnight on buses and trains during the journey, such things are wise. Learned that after trying to push through 3-5 day journeys at the beginning of the trek. A bit in the mineral pool, then two and a half cycles of the radiant rock sauna (at a third of the price of a cheap hotel), and then to the Basilica (after a bit of inner deliberation whether I might be better off taking it easy there, recumbens cum fratribus, or, technically speaking, alone). "Lord, if I'm mistaken, teach me my errors while I'm alive." And about 20 minutes later, I had the inner certainty that I should head south to the church. The first subway station had an issue with the fare machine, so I walked on down the line, including across a lake along a thin stone dam, following two children (who, it should be noted, weren't porting two bags of travelling kit).
When I arrived at the Basilica, which I've never visited, as there's usually an admission fee, I rant the gamut of the tour-staff and their quiet backing of the security folks. Oddly, they asked if I wanted to go to the English service. Given the rubrics, very surprised and wondering at this. I opted for the local language in the main hall, because the point was to be at the event. My guess is that she thought that I was just using it to catch a quick glimpse of the place, and although he was right about that, the way she was right about that would never have occurred to her.
To walk into the room is a wonder. Immense, bright and clean yet somehow still dull, smoky old walls, murals, and decorations. (Including four statures, presumably evangelists, who are on sorts of platforms in the crossing dome, parallel to the ground, to rather good effect.) Very interesting local liturgy that seems to resonate along the precisely the fault lines that give me some concern with the present politics here. No consecration bells, still the Lenten blocks. All crucifixes veiled, but still incensed, and after the long local devotional that followed the Mass, I assume they were bowing to the veiled cross above the tabernacle. At the conclusion of the communion rite, three sort of chalice-like pyxes were placed on the main altar. Abp., with concelebrants, offered incense and adoration from behind the sacramental altar. Then the removal to the altar of repose behind the main altar, never leaving the sanctuary, with a local variation on the Pane Lingua melody that I couldn't quite grok. Then, the return to the sanctuary, the congregation having sat down when they left view, and an old-style changing of vestments for the Abp, who then appeared to do a private silent meditation at the ambo, not a soul having left the darkened nave. Then to the old altar with the tabernacle -- removal of something, perhaps a corporal, and a solemn opening of the doors. Then (the order of some of these might be off), the Abp, with vested concelebrants, solemnly doused the six candles on the high altar and reverently stripped the altar. (Under the American system, this usually falls to the assistant sacristan at St. Pat's, and I have to imagine that he'd be surprised that anyone was watching. Though I usually was.) Then another private mediation at the ambo, followed by a very long spoken meditation in the darkened church, the Abp's reverent low tones the only noise. Quite powerful, actually, even not understanding a word. An attempt to hold them safe using the voice and mind alone, rather than the sacred appurtenances of the building.
Last year, I was with the Croatians in Mostar for these ceremonies, and among other things, I was very struck by the way that the priests used the formularies to create a dynamic of personal power. Herrschaft, in a certain way of speaking. But this is the nature of the sacred fabric here. The Boston puritans would call it priestcraft, but it has preserved the faith for centuries. Not incidentally, in this very building. And the essential fabric of the faith is that thing within which the things happen. That's why the long sermon in the darkened church was so powerful for me. Christ and his fishermen-and-tax-collector minyan had finished their three years of training; no more midrashes on the text and shared formal prayers, no more spiritual apprenticeship. Events now, not deliberate devisements would be the nature of the time. Only the voice and the thoughts of the one who remained -- not the sacrament and the power.
Events themselves, due to the nature of the event, would be the nature of the time.
Walked in for a last afternoon in the city. A piece by one of the national playwrights of the early 20th c. at the drama theatre was sold out in the balcony, but I managed to get to Traviata at the national theatre in time, $3 standing room. Violetta extraordinary, some moments of the singing were the equal of any house I've been to. With the walking around and picking up sundries for the journey, didn't accomplish the central intention of the walk in (an hour or so over a proper coffee). Will have to come back for that, I suppose.
This perpetual peregrination can be wearying. The plan for this leg of the journey was a month of excellent theatre with $5 tickets, and then a fortnight of desk and writing focus. Some complications -- social unrest cancelled about a third of the shows, slight injury meant that I had to stop the AM runs, but basically a good visit. Now to see if I can maintain the work while shifting places, TARDIS-like.
Chrism Mass at St. Pat's in the city. Always made it a point to be there when I was in town, starting two Card. Archbps. ago. The pillars near the pews in the back must think it odd that the actor fellow isn't there anymore. But pillars are just pillars. Peregrination seems preferable to the St. Sebastian approach.
Evening walk along the quay that I had hoped would be my dawn run, until a bit of an injury intervened. Not catastrophic, but the sort of thing that if not given time to heal, might have persisted for some time, so I just focused on the desk time. It's a remarkable city, definitely one of the places in the region I would seek out if I jumped over here for something more than a peregrination. Perhaps a year sometime to do some proper writing (Master & Margarita again). A book-lined apartment in an old concrete building somewhere. The politics and religion would be the difficult bit, but it's hardly an issue in daily life, more of a gestalt thing.
The general outline of the visit was a month of theatregoing in the center of things, followed by a fortnight at the desk in the periphery. Admittedly about a third of the theatregoing/concertgoing ($5/$6 tickets, for the most part) was lost to the political unrest, but the balance sufficed.
My second visit to this place. The danger of the second visit is a bit like trying to repeat a moment in a play that worked rather well the night before. Unconsciously, all of your energies go to placing yourself in that position, around these certain things that you remember as meaningful, in an attempt to conjure the initial magic of it. Then you slowly realize what you're doing, and begin again to look at the things around you as if for the first time, remembering their originary force when you first encountered them.
Looking forward to the third time already. I'm told that it's the charm.
I continue to think that the Matrix films were generally right, in an even stronger manner than the Baudrillard-based distortions of reality. Which are actually pretty uncontroversial. It's stronger than that. Until the false glazing of the normal way that things are with the world, the schein, the vague sense of everything in existence -- until this vanishes, you honestly can't tell a good thing from a bad thing.
Hence, perhaps, there is some danger in putting all of your writing out there, as opposed to filling notebooks on the desk. As Plato pointed out, once you've written something, there's no telling who might pick it up. Beyond the risk of gaslighting, there's also the certainty that much of it wouldn't chime with the way folks think about the world after watching television for a few hours.
Nonetheless, I've gone toe-to-toe with some rather interesting folks, and in every encounter, the open book has been clearly the right way to go. It might not make much sense, and it might be taken to be something that it isn't, but it will all be very necessary in the end.
Abraham Lincoln used to ask a certain riddle: If people decided to call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs would horses have?
The answer is, of course, four, because deciding to call a horse's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. But it's perhaps revealing that a late 19th c. American lawyer would think of this. Pragmatically, in the language game one could play as if one played no other, if the expected answer was five, then five would be the correct answer. There, social norms govern the meaning. We've decided that certain things are quarks and opossums, and certain other things aren't, and these are our ways.
But this is why it becomes important that (late 19th c./early 20th c.) pragmatism is a species (or perhaps a descendant) of idealism, not empiricism. The ability to shift the language norm comes from the fact that the idea itself (that there is a thing called a horse) governs the positivist, empirical, long-settled, ultimately meaning-giving horse-leg-counting process. And that idea can be changed. The change in the idea would be the thing that governed the change in the normative constraints on speech, not some private contract as to language use. When social norms make changes in language use (in ways not directly governed by personal power), it is because something is revealed by the new usage that seems more valuable than the work the old usage was doing.
So, to sort of bring this together, Abe is right. If everyone decided to change a norm within a language, precisely because the scheme was sufficiently plastic to do this, the idea must be the source of the meaning, and not the long-settled empirical processes of verification. They simply wouldn't be able to do it without a more convincing idea. Without a vision, the people perish.
Perhaps.
Aristotle defines three types of pseudos -- the thing that is false (e.g., fool's gold); the thing that is spoken about falsely, and the person who is false. The critical point is that the first two allow us to see the possibility of the third. Otherwise, we would just have to assume that the person whom we encounter is playing certain games of language and action in a grand bid to prevail in life, and we needed merely to enter the game. On the contrary, it is possible for someone to go against their basic social role in a way that makes him or her so difficult to understand, that we continue to think about them according to their formal role, but know this cognition based in appearances to be false (1); and it is possible for people habitually to use language in a way that doesn't allow the alethic elements of speech to do their work (2).
Western society, particularly in its pragmatic, commercial aspects, has chosen to disbelieve in the possibility of this third risk, figuring that the effective people would merely rise. And, in fact, the industrial forms have been thriving. But systematically disbelieving in the possibility of personal falsity in the interests of game-playing seems a risk, and again, perhaps historically a bit unique.
If the industrial forms continue to flourish, and the trucks of frozen hamburgers continue to roll in every few days, the only indication that things might be a bit wrong is the slow discovery of the nature of the people around you, and the events within the apparent world, as they unfold.
So, perhaps, gently down the stream. With care to the surroundings.
#cloudyday
At that moment, he was coming in from the countryside. He happened to be passing by when he unexpectedly found himself caught up in a drama that overwhelmed him, like the heavy wood that was placed on his shoulders.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250413-omelia-palme.html
This is interesting. In the section below as well, there's the suggestion that those who are accidentally suffering are carrying the cross as well. Having been wandering through a part of the world where different faiths have been trying to vindicate themselves for centuries, you can definitely see certain "types" of society associated with the different faiths and confessions. The notion that those suffering within these societies, say, for example a Christian culture, in an entirely incidental manner--but in a way that would not be occurring if the society was not caught up in the work of social progress, that the suffering is united in a sort of Cyrenian way, even absent consciousness of the specifically Christian character of the difficulty.
Difficulty: does that mean that someone who suffers because an Islamic society is trying to change the world is outside the specifically redemptive suffering?
Imagine two Simons of Cyrene. One knows of Jesus, the other doesn't. The second actually carries the cross. The first carries Dismas' cross, but identifies his difficulty with those of Christ.
Perhaps the answer is that the initial perception of the situation doesn't govern. The Cyrenian didn't know what he was doing when he began to do it, but then perhaps he noticed something. Perhaps the one in a foreign culture who identifies his sufferings with those of Christ comes to understand, by this attempt at understanding, that they're distinct from them. But the disposition is to questioning the difficulty, coming to understand its nature. Not just submitting to the difficulty without willing it, letting the compulsion be determinative. To understand the difficulty, not in a pragmatic sense, but in a teleological sense. The whole point of the exercise is that the nature of the difficulty--as difficulty--ultimately isn't determinative. Its meaning is determinative.
I've been trying to find, among many other things, places where I can do some work in the more formal style, as opposed to the desert-island apodictics (which sometimes actually turn out well). In particular, I think this would be the time to look at a legal history of the corporate form -- in the Hegelian sense of the history; analyzing what we thought we were doing when we unleashed the forms of these companies of discovery and invention, derogating or devolving their power from the monarchs. One of the interesting untold stories of early modern England is how many people were digging up their estates in commercial frenzy in Leicester's Commonwealth. In addition to companies sent off to Muscovy and the Indies, and the monopolies that consolidated trade, mineral development of land assets was very much on the uptick. Some interesting cases about which of the rocks inherently belonged to the freshly protestant throne.
It seems that we're presently on the brink of a sort of axial shift away from the world of public law and towards the corporate state model. Populating social forms of industry from among the population, as opposed to structuring the republic. But people still seem to behave politically as if the state were distinct from corporate interests. This isn't a question of corruption, it's a shift in the nature of the state. And now, we're to the point at which people think it right that those excluded from the social forms of industry have no productive place in the society. Which would be all well and good, if that were to be the ordained and established rule of the society, but I can't help but think that at some level, the people are still mentally, despite the economic reality, within an ordered republic, or even a kingdom. (The old Roman epitaph for the generals: "They did not despair of the republic.") Perhaps the modern voters even make the current politics into a semblance of a kingdom in order to ratify that belief against economic reality.
The real scholarship on the corporate form, reaching to its earliest antecedents in the context of natural law, is Gierke, mostly untranslated, although Maitland famously translated one of the books.
Just one of the things percolating in the mind. As the semaphores from the passing academic ships grow less frequent, I'm actually shifting my thoughts to more essential thoughts. Fleshing out the philosophical worlds that I made quick tracings of in the dissertation, keeping connected to the theatre as a sort of touchstone. German enlightenment, and its correlates in modern analytic philosophy. And that's probably the right way to continue, as the essential nature of the thought keeps the mind focused on a day-to-day basis.
The received wisdom in most fields is that if you're not in one of the top few programs in a field, it really doesn't matter what you write about in school. And if people had the slightest notion of what happens, given that license, at the state universities, we'd likely go back to having normal schools only (schoolmarm training). But, despite the fact that I found myself in a bit of a swamp in my department, I took enough classes across campus in philosophy and history to develop the sensibilities and research skills sufficiently so that I know what to look for, and how to think about it when I find it.
So I do have a principal project in the mind, should the opportunity arise. But for now, continuing the more essential philosophy, faith, and aesthetics (theatre). Given my druthers, I'd like to think about these things and shape them to a coherent form. I would read, write, and think about these things if I found myself on a desert island with no prospect of leaving. But if I were to play a more formal part in the academic industry, I certainly would know what I would want to bring to their attention, and could likely put something worthwhile together.
On the other hand, perhaps, like Auerbach and Adorno, I should write as if there would be readers, even in the present peripatetic times. And if I were still in the city, I might do that. The Rose room would be a congenial place for such a thing--there are probably a dozen such projects being pursued in it every day. But there are certain differences between the cases of Auerbach and Adorno and my present situ. For the nonce, at least, I should probably continue to work according to transcendent principles. Those of which I can honestly say I can do no other. Actually learning quite a bit about both the older philosophies and the more recent thoughts along those lines.
In contrast to earlier visits (on my first visit, not only did I frequent the patriarchal cathedral and the large cathedral (odd--Rome does that too), but I was at the midnight Easter service at the latter, and it was my principal point of memory for the city in the interval. But given some recent experiences in the churches of the national church, quite understandable given the present politics, I've been respecting their discipline, and (on my own initiative) staying clear, except for the occasional visit to the parish near the seat of government, built in the early 20th c. Some rather extraordinary dreams, though.
From my windows here, I can see a long-abandoned (at least, I've never seen it unlocked) small Catholic church. On one of the first days, there was an extraordinarily large and clear rainbow across the panorama, landing directly at the church. Or perhaps it was to the Orthodox monastery nearby, which seems to be quite thriving. (It doesn't seem large enough to be a monastery. Perhaps it's like the Romanian manastre, which seems in my (quite likely mistaken) experience, to be frequently used to designate a church.) Though the peals I hear are Latin peals, not Orthodox peals. Perhaps another nearby church. Quite a few of them about.
Long walk around some unfamiliar parts of the city on a warm spring day. Political festival was in the streets by the Sbux that I had mentally figured on for a post-Passion Sunday Americano, so I ducked into the one in the tourist quarter for a bit. Very scrupulously avoiding all the politics--didn't even leave the rooms on the day of the big rally last month. Ended up taking a long loop around the new city. Many miles circling, after the 2 hr. direct walk in. Absolutely exhausted at the end.
The background music at the cafes and stores here is odd. Basically the 1980s AM radio catalogue, almost invariably in English, but redone, evened out, usually heavily auto-tuned, likely by artists signing away perpetual worldwide rights in exchange for the delivered lunch and the demo tape. A cult of authenticity, and close listening to phonographs might be opportune hereabouts. Some exceptions to the muddle: I still treasure the moment in which I walked into an underground grocery at an intersection, and the Gypsy Kings' "A Mi Manera" started up. But for the most part, English. A bit like the Christmas fair music in Hungarian Romanian Transylvania, also almost invariably in English. The relics of St. Nicholas were after all, translated to the trade center of Bari, and became a merchant cult. The saintly gift-giving bishop. In many places hereabouts, Latin Christianity stands for commerce, and the old empires of the north.
All things to all people. Actually, this is the need for the universal church, one not defined by any understanding of it outside its central truths. Even though it does exist to these people principally through the means of these understandings. But the phenomenological context also bears the mystery, which is to say, the sacrament.