To attempt to explain to people that their words mean less to them than these same words used to mean to others would, for obvious reasons, be a fool's errand. The only remaining task, then, would be to build the eternal forms in the present time, using only the shadows of the tools.
Or at least that's the sort of thing that I might say if I were trying to seem sententious and old-fashioned.
Apparently, the Executive is thinking about revoking the begging license granted to the clerics gathered around Rev. Harvard's old library. Difficult times for the crimson piping. Since the academic lawyers defending the Executive appear to be writing from schools with football teams playing with blue uniforms, based entirely on a pseudo-Goethean theory of political colors, my guess is that Old Eli can rest easy.
L'Etas Unis ne fait pas la guerre contre la science...
All of these countries are very hospitable, both officially and personally, and this country has the added breathing room of being rather firmly in the Western side of the ledger books of the moment. (Though I see the national swerve of the present executive yesterday had an enormous effect, as the much-anticipated and celebrated visa-free program appears to have been derailed. This might land more strongly than might be in evidence in the western-facing discourse. There are countries here in which the citizens likely would never even be allowed to visit London, and there is even one country which prohibits its own citizens from leaving unless they have a sufficient amount of money, in complicance with a treaty agreement with its neighbors. Outside Schengen and the rich West, visas matter.)
The arts are much stronger than in many much wealthier and more-systematized countries. And the ticket prices for classical music and theatre are almost precisely a tenth of prices in the American cities. (The American theatre is based on a production model that maintains these high ticket prices; the number of strong professional actors in the cities who are out of work at any given moment exceeds by far the number working--the guild publishes these numbers regularly.) That said, there are peculiar assymetries. There are countries in which it is hard to buy a cheap, decent computer, countries where the prices are basically the same as in the West, and there are places where the tarriffs are low enough that you could use the Western websites for supply. The same obtains for things like cheap jeans, decent shirts, travel sundries, etc. Some cities keep coffee at a reasonable price, some don't; the more Westernized cities are generally in the latter category--a tall americano in sbux in this city would be (note the subjunctive) twice the cost (>$4) of the cost in the last country. Objects of irrational desire. The more Westernized malls are basically desire machines, enormous adveritsing images of beautiful people on video screens, and those in the less Westernized areas more of places of quiet prosperity and rest (play areas for the children, areas set aside for womens' luxury clothing) though there's generally considerably fewer goods on offer, and what is on offer is generally more expensive.
From time to time, I catch things in the corner of my eye which serve to remind me that I'm not in Kansas anymore. (Full disclosure, I can't recall if I've ever actually been in Kansas, and from the news stateside, it's entirely possible that even Kansas isn't Kansas anymore. Sic transit gloria mundi -- possibly ad astra.) At any rate, I was walking to the German hypermarket for groceries, when a constabulary car drove past with its siren sounding and lights flashing. Apparently, they were dealing with a fellow at the bus stop who was shouting. I walked quickly past, but about 15 yards away, past an intersection, I turned to look at the event. And one of the constables turned and looked at me -- entirely unthreatening, just as much dispassion and curiosity as I suppose I was showing. Fair enough, I thought, and then walked another 15 yards or so, crossed another street, and then turned to take in the long view. And the fellow turned again and stood there looking at me--totally neutral, not threatening, just as curious as I was. I suppose I stick out a bit, clearly a foreign tourist, so perhaps it was just curiosity about the fellow who looked a bit out of place. Quite a few people about; busy area.
Later that evening I saw the aftermath of a car accident from a distance. After about 10 minutes, the constabulary arrived, and within a minute or so, the small crowd that had gathered to watch was completely gone.
Anodyne events, nothing objectionable, but it does serve to remind that this is a strange world, perhaps with unpredictable social mores and lessons. I'll stick to the officers mess (the desk in the rooms is sufficient mess), the coffeehouses, and the balconies of the theatres.
One goes on. And quite often, although not invariably the case, that one turns out to be me.
Let no one think that they've gotten an iota beyond Vladmir and Estragon. There are just different types of turnips to be sought and found.
Eavesdropping on Gershwin in St. Petersburg. The monoculture can be a bit surreal at times. It took me a bit at the Christmas fairs in the Balkans to realize that people weren't hearing the American carols and popular song as I was. They stand for something else in their minds. The distant ideal.
My motto for this peregrination -- Ovid's "Heu, quam vicina est ultima terra mihi." Written in the Balkans, incidentally. Sorrowful letters in exile.
Every moment in your life, no matter what the condiditions, is a point towards which, at some other point in your life, you will direct your care and will -- perhaps wanting it to recur, perhaps thinking it the source of meaning (or perhaps one to which in the past, you have directed your mind). Perhaps our life consists of these tensions between these points. In which case, mindfulness would seem to counsel that the point that is the object should attempt to be conscious of the point of the subject of attention and will, and the finitude it implies. Nunc et in hora mortis, e.g.
Mulling coffee methods. On this peregrination, I've been using the Turkish/Balkan method with a steel pot from the German hypermarket. But apparently, this method provides much more cholesterol; in some scenarios, a single cup provides much more than the safe daily allowable portion (and the levels of oils in Balkan roasted coffee are high; it is, after all, a roasted nut/bean). The mokka pot had been my usual method in city life, but apparently, there's an aluminum risk there, and I'm not sure that the abbreviated steam-mechanism of the pot would provide less of the oils. Will mull.
The images from underneath the Magdalen tower and the bridge are interesting. Throngs of visitors, much like the crowds in NYC, penned up safely distant from the edges of the brige, with the constabulary in hi-vis vests on either side. To be clear, unlike Jude Fawley, I'm rather clear that the Christminster that I have in my understanding is of more use to me than any Oxford I might visit.
May morning in Transylvania. The city quiet during the run, due to the holiday. The 16th c. university quite idyllic in the dawn light, and almost completely empty. In this part of the world, the cities tend to clear out during the holidays, as everyone goes to their second homes in the country. Weather quite good for maying or, for that matter, sitting at the table and reading.
Notably, the Founders did not envision the direct election of Senators, and the old ways would possibly give the state legislatures (i.e., the ideological centers of the interests currently being claimed by the populists on both sides) a more clear role in the national scheme, and -- most critically -- insulation from populist administrations and national political machines.
A society with a more or less permanent underclass of some size can never become a communitarian society. The resources of the society devoted to maintaining the underclass become a more or less fixed sum, and anyone outside of that underclass who requires the assistance of the society is drawing away from that on a zero-sum basis, imperiling the political compromise. Such a claim is resisted both by the defenders of the underclass and those straining to acquire as much wealth as possible for themselves. It is an unscheduled poverty.
So perhaps one danger of less-prosperous years is that a prosperous society will resist an expansion of the social role, as it will be seen as ceding more resources to the existing permanent underclass, which has only won its proportion by a hard political fight, and the resulting identity and cohesiveness; the latter will then operate to exclude these other claims.
Rather exhausting day yesterday. Sleep at 3AM, and waking out of sorts, late in the morning. Must take steps to prevent those sorts of days. Actually finished up shortly after midnight, but then there was dinner to be made, and distraction. Relatedly, the BBC, or as I call it, the Saxe-Coburgs' Marconi machine, appears to have taken the Goon Show archives offline, likely for purposes of exploitation. Shame. Excellent cooking/eating background noise.
My CV is solid, and I have a decent grasp on the mens sana et corpore sano, but this is still an extended exercise in catastrophe management (on an Atrean scale). I worked professionally for a bit, then did a decent conservatory degree, then ten years in the city. During that time working in the theatre, I set my basic stance towards the world. After about a decade, I was driven from that ground, and went to get a top-tier law doctorate; took as many doctrinal courses as I could (which is generally considered madness), and graduated with a good GPA, and passed the NY Bar with a strong score after self-study. Despite that, I was again rather quickly driven from that ground in the city. I then headed to a large midwestern university to do a research doctorate, synthesizing elements of these two fields. Took many courses, ranged broadly across the university, philosophy, history, etc., before writing the dissertation (the department didn't let me audit seminars when writing, contary to the usual practice). The department there was pretty corrupt, and I didn't go along with some of the bad things, and perhaps in response, when I finished the dissertation, they refused to schedule a defense.
That's the story so far. I am basically still working to vindicate that initial stance, but in the interval, my understanding of the struggle has considerably broadened. Onward.
In the difficult February, in the port city to the south, I used sleep as a means--a solid ten or twelve hours (as against the customary five and change) could preserve me against the difficulties. Now, whether or not that was a good notion (and it should be noted that it saw me safely through), with this springtime, the body needs to learn on a deeper level than it did last springtime that we're not doing that anymore. Gently down the stream.
(Abruptness, as the yogis point out, is dangerous. Advance the morning in half-hour increments, rather than trying to take a flying leap. Unless, of course you want to take a flying leap. In which case, go for it.)
Listening to Handel's Messiah from Moscow. All of this is still one disjointed, fractious, warring and confused project of the Enlightenment. Bloody wars under battling tricoleurs. So -- focus on the work of the Enlightenment. Don't get distracted with more transcendental thoughts. (These are notes-to-self.)
And yet, this is a very ponderous and unwieldy reading of it. Tones are very careful, and there is a rounded beauty to some moments that I've not heard before. But the heavy tones of centuries of Orthodoxy are obscuring the work that rings so clearly in the brash sunlit uplands of the Scottish and German Enlightenment. I remember a Samson and Deliah in Bucharest at the beginning of this peregrination -- I was reading Milton's Samson in the interval, and realized that I needed to think with Milton, rather than the with the dark, romantic tones of these eastern orthodoxies.
Being a Westerner, I should reason as a Westerner. The quickness of the mind, the Anglo-American law, German and British philosophy (with the odd American mixed in). Intellectually, nativism consists of placing yourself in the way of working with which you have greatest facility. Beckett wrote in French, but Beckett didn't write in order to write. His understanding of things was already complete when he staged some scenarios in order to show us how things are. If the world is still an active question, if there is hope, then we have to cling to the homelands of the mind, and its most familiar languages.
Which means that we need to take up the mantle of the Enlightenment in the context of effective history, even abroad.
Everyone involved is very smart, of course, but reading the TLS is a little like reading a political article in a trade paper, like the bar society magazines that I used to get free copies of as a student. The pieces themselves, though brightly lit, are largely unilluminating, offering at best a bit of schein, and the only useful things are generally the mentions of other things used to leaven the prose, either signalling erudition, or trying to send a worthwhile signal or two through the flames. Basically, reading for the offhand footnotes -- the small flickering things near the edges.
The possible chronology of the end of the last papcy is interesting. Assume that the doctors told him on release that he was near the end, and he should reduce his activity, and begin to seek some peace. Of course, what followed was a whirlwind of political and spiritual activity. (Against the morbid background of speculation and media interest -- the new form of the fascination with death and the desire to anoint the corpse, perhaps.) The point, as one SJ once explained to a retreat I was attending, is to finish the roller-coaster ride with your arms raised and shouting in exhiliration. Perhaps.
Of course, this happens against the background of a two-thousand year old see of authority. So the energy, in keeping with the spirit of the age, and of his spiritual discipline, might have another context in the larger picture. But at least he was true to the spirit of the age and his discipline, rather than imitating some general notion. And perhaps the spirit of this age and this discipline will prevail within history. That's the thing about history. Things change.
Notable that in the seating arrangements, heads of republican states appear to have been granted a status equal to those of reigning houses. As mis-translated Mao had it, perhaps it's no longer too soon to tell.
Which is not to say that the republics aren't in a bit of a mess these days. Perhaps the real point is that going backwards is no longer an option. Or perhaps the equvalence suggests that it is an option. Or perhaps it was all the caprice of a diplomatic cadre appointed by a more liberal administration.
Time tells.