Oddly soul-less Beethoven's Ninth from Warsaw to close the season.  Like a waterfall of flower petals rather than water itself.  Beethoven without the political danger.  Speed, when it finally came, without passion or fear.  Perhaps deliberately created as a consumer good of comfort. 

Still, though, the ability to just eavesdrop upon a major ensemble playing the Ninth as a matter of course is a good thing.  There must be a better way to get all of the remarkable things going on in the world at any given moment to the attention of more people. So much of the present media mindset was created by bursts of transmission over the air at set times to those in reach of the transmission.  The internet is fundamentally a different thing.

I tend not to write and think about foreign wars, as it's generally not my business, even though the hard-won doctrines of neutrality seem to have slipped away in the last few years.  I doubt that there will be the equivalent of the Alabama settlement after the dust settles in Europe, for example.  (Interestingly, the U.K, as a dominant naval power, always sidestepped the 19th c. neutrality conventions.)  The events of the last few days or so in the Levant are troubling.  Going after general command and control seems to signal an all-out war.  I don't think a conflict can get more across-the-board than that.  These are not proportional attacks in pursuit of declared objectives, nor are they claimed to be.  Which is why I'm puzzled that the news seems to treat it as the sort of one-off strikes that happen from time to time.  Hold on to your... whatever it is that you think that you should grab onto.  #notexpert #justwiseacring

 Muesli has gone up by 33% since my last visit.  Mores, tempore, &c.  Will have to check the German drugstore, but the new version seems to be the prevailing price.  Backup plan: corn flakes and boiled apples.

Back in the city of the Jedi Council.  Interesting trip.  En route, stopped off in the capital of the old Republic to make the pilgrimage that was blocked earlier, as the national church had been celebrating a pontifical liturgy when I arrived, and wanted only those of that nationality inside the building at the time.  No matter.  Some odd dreams in the interval.  An interesting visit to a favorite city.  But traveling by bus in summer does have its peculiar difficulties.  Must find a magic carpet or something.

The rooms here are a bit pricier than the usual budget for these travels would allow.  Some financial shenanigans forced me to book relatively last-minute, off the price curve.   Had wanted to return to the theatre festival in Transylvania this month, but all of the places in the old Saxon capital were outside of the budget.  As it turns out, with the last minute booking, what I'm paying now would have put me in range of a cheap set of rooms timely booked there, so that's a mite frustrating.  But he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.  Mainly arm-wrestling the invisible hand of the markets, it seems.

Hoping for a productive month.  It is familiar territory.  Hopefully the shadow of war in the Western Balkans will recede once all involved realize that everyone else in the world is panicking over trade routes and there's very little support for vindicating claims of ethnic right.  A peculiar world.  For my part, I just read philosophy and visit the theatres.

 Racine's Berenice, apparently a new production at the Comedie Francaise, at the national theatre here as part of a festival/conference -- back row, top balcony, $10.  Closed my eyes and listened to the Alexandrines for most of it; cast quite skillful.  Interesting characters in the top balcony.  At the end, I might have been the only one in the house standing to applaud, but I was right.

 

La Gioconda at the opera house.  Upper balcony side, about as far from the plane of the plaster line as the conductor was.  ($5.67 via half-price site.)  Consciously summoning up memories of the visit and performance here as an undergraduate.  After that visit, the theatre of this city stood for a certain thing in my mind for a very long time, and I tried, with modest success, to inhabit that idyll.  I suppose you can't go unheimlich again.  But a very powerful evening.

 Oddly, as I stood up at the end, I realized that what had seemed to be a robust zipper on the jeans had somehow given out completely.  Luckily, simply buttoning the coat solved the problem.  Always wear a coat of decent length.  

Interesting that it's on the feast of Barnabas ('Barnaba' is the Inquisition spy.)  Possibly a noticed holiday in these parts--traditionally the midsummer day in old style dating. 

Under no illusions as to the character of the environs.  Though I've stumbled into a reasonably comfortable place for the several days I'm here, this is still the most commercial, class-conscious, and ruthless city on the itinerary.  Sometimes you need to take the low path through the old city.  Though I didn't have any choice in making the interstitial jaunt, I'm hoping to make the best of it.  It does bring some shadows into the mind, but the dawn runs are easier here than in sleepy Transylvania, and much more than the other place before but one.  

The immediate  environs are the biosphere of the Euro-jaunters, which I find a bit frightening, tbh.  But on the periphery, the familiar chain coffee stores where I can sit for a bit with a book.  And the museums and theatres are very reasonably priced, if you're willing to take the most distant seats in the house.  Which has been my course for lo these many years.  A habitual resident of the heavens. 

Adventures in foreign grocery guesswork, cont'd: if the fresh yeast looks like butter, arguably it shouldn't be stored with the butter.  ($0.57)  My error, though--should have recognized the Serbo-Croat word on the alternate labeling. 

Interesting aside in one of the Frederick Forsyth obits in the Times.  He was struck by the women of Budapest.  There is a certain vibe amongst the folks of both genders here.  Perhaps centuries ago, a people from the east found good farmland and an especially defensible and auspicious bend in the great river, and decided to settle down and milk the happiness of the earth.  And the culture does still seem to have the fruitful-and-multiply stance about it.  At least in the capital.  The outer districts are likely entirely populated by unshaven Kraznahorkian madmen living in castles of dirty, discarded styrofoam construction paneling on the windswept heath, staring listlessly at the groundhogs.  

Aside from travels in university days, one of my first encounters with the place was a bobbled bus transfer -- as the stops hadn't been announced, and I didn't know that there were two stations in town, and it was the middle of the night, I got off the bus and realized my mistake as the bus pulled away.  Looking around, I saw a subway station (above ground) nearby and decided that there must be a map there.  I walked over, and just as I arrived, what turned out to be the last train of the evening arrived, and I got on, although I hadn't yet got to the map on the platform.  As it turned out, it was going precisely where I needed to go.  I stacked my bags on the seat opposite, and as I did so, a young woman with long dark hair and a long flowing skirt, seemingly the genius of the place herself, waked past and smiled.

It takes the power of decision to decide to milk what joy you can from the earth, and though I've never seen eye to eye with the Epicureans, the stance that sets itself to live in such a manner does has some faint tincture of Eden to it. 

One of the difficulties in (finally being able to start to make a return to) the Jedi dojo is that folks tend to think that it is a message to them.  Another consequence of the triumph of pragmatism.  But disciple isn't a demonstration of virtue; it wants nothing to do with the observer.  It's not a message, at least not a message from me, and if it's a message from someone else, I have nothing to do with either the sender or the recipient.  The original meaning of virtue is strength.  The shining city on the hill was not built, and does not function, in order to send messages by semaphore or flashing lights.  What this age misses is the reality of the thing itself.  

Aha, pasta paprikash.  

 Apparently, the thing in the tube wasn't tomato paste.  Will have to see how it tastes with the pasta. #adventuresinforeigngroceries.

 One thing to be wary of: dissipation.  Not in the wastrel sense, but in the reaching-towards-everything-at-once sense.  The world has meaning for us only when the shapes on the outside are as clear and distinct as the shapes on the inside.  Having nothing better at hand, we think using ourselves.