Paradoxically, the unreflective usually take the sense of being in danger as the primary indication on the question of being in danger, vel non.

 At every moment of your life, no matter the place, no matter the situation, every other moment in your life has a relation to it, and is hoping for it to be a certain thing.  No matter the present situaiton, there will be or were moments in your life when you might think about this situation, and have a needful relationship to it, wanting it to be a certain thing.  Our life also has meaning through intension -- these moments rely upon one another.  Perhaps the essence of "being true to yourself."  

Paradoxically, physical rest and getting away from the urban areas can actually work against dispassion.  The water clears, things come into view.  Thoughts are heard and held more clearly.

Like the executive in Priestley's "I have Been Here Before" who attempts to signal to his wife that the idyllic country inn might be more dangerous that the city hotel filled with the blare of jazz bands. 

Once again, I find myself in the southern Balkans, and pining to flee to the mountains of Bulgaria.  (And, presumably, when there, I would sense the path northward.)   

Precisely the sensation I had in the country to the south in February.  But the art of exploring occasionally means trying the thing you didn't like before, but with a slightly different aspect (different culture, faith).  

It's by no means as bad as it was, and the quarters are in a decent neighborhood.  I look forward to sussing out the cultural bits in the remaining time, but I don't think I'll linger. 

 

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Orthodox - having the true faith.  Western: truly having the faith.  

"In the holiness of truth." 

 "Up to half my kingdom"  -- i.e., I will remain king.  Giving away a preponderance of the kingdom is the only thing that would change that.  He will retain 51% of the shares.  Likely not an actually limiting principle.  Expectations of a request well under that.

 Decollation of the Baptist.  Officially late summer.  The beginning and the end of the ministry: Ecce, agnus Dei to Go, then and...   Ending in the beginning.

There are three things that I'm trying to accomplish now, and today, I was able to spend a few hours on one of them.  In fairness, I did spend several hours on CV distribution, &c., which I try to do every several days or so, in addition to the real-time alerts. And yet, I was always doing things.

At the state university, I learned how to plod, which can be a skill when you cover ground in the long run, but that also means that the course of the day fills up with the exercises, meditations, etc. that keep the candle going from day to day.  The trick is to know when to draw from those energies to feed the projects, when there are projects that it would be good to spend as much time on as possble.  I certainly wouldn't give up the daily routines, the running, the eavesdropped Mass (liturgy of the word only if on tape), the focused morning reading, etc.  And yet, the thing carrying the mechanism through the day can fill up the day, and there's usually not much to show for it, though sometimes there's some useful things in the writing.

As Heid observed, the plodding is a form of existence that already knows its end and is working towards it.  And that can have an effect on a life.

More mercurial, perhaps.  To the extent that it's possible without destabilizing the covered wagon heading down the trail.  

 Flinging CVs into every open transom.  (Far and few, far and few...)

Lasciate ogni speranza... 

Have tried the local water over the last few days, after ascertaining that it was at least theoretically safe.  Interesting.  From the local river mostly, apparently, in addition to springs, which are likely abundant, given the surrounding mountain ranges.  Heavily treated, though.  Will let it sit out for a few hours before use, if I continue on with it.

 

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Returned to Pynchon's Against the Day recently.  More and more clear to this pugnacious reader that it's about being shocked, or occasionally seduced, out of the episodic cartoon by the events of the aforementioned day.  The plot lines, in a fanciful though likely not entirely inaccurate reading, seem to trace the varying threads of the post-9/11 response to things.  But eventually we're inside a labyrinth of more realistic events affecting a slate of characters on a Dostoyevskian scale -- perhaps an uncharitable reading on my part, but I think, about halfway through, we get to the point at which you would have to know and care about the models for the characters to follow the plot-lines.  Even given the mind-candy settings (Michaelson-Moreley, higher maths, etc.). Or perhaps it's not the best novel to read whan nomading through the Balkans.  It requires the ennui of the UWS coffeehouse in early evening.  

Might see it through this time, but time and mental focus, assuming there's a difference between those two things, are precious things.

I've joked about this a bit, but it does reflect some rather serious thought.  Given the peculiar times between the beginning of the JD and the present, I would likely take a Socratic, if not Shermenesque, view to serving in leadership or government.  As an artist or a writer, or even a plain advocate in the courts, I could explain a few things, and help people out.  But in that Tamino didn't knowingly enter the trials, I suspect he would have very little business being in Sarastro's court afterwards.  I have my understanding; it suffices.  In a way, it does reconfirm the initial vocation, which was run a bit akew in the context of the NYC industry.  Vissi d'arte, &c.

I would not underestimate the dangers of the present political moment.  There seems to be a general sanction on lying as hard as you can, possibly extending to matters high and low. 

Which in better times is at least mildy frowned upon.  

Odd, the Great and Terrible Gurgle appears to have taken a dislike to this subsite.  Completely de-indexed, even after sitemaps, page fixes, and individual pages sent in.  (As I used to do this sort of thing for a living, not entirely clueless in that area.)  Also, the archive bots seem to have developed a similar distaste -- last snapshots were in March. (Posted a few pages there this afternoon, perhaps it will whet the bots' appetite.)

Bit odd.   Time was, this sort of hand-crafted content was the gold standard for search indexing.  A little like realizing that you haven't left any footprints on the trail for the last mile.  Might force me into mass-market authorship, just so I can be sure that a copy or two will still linger on Salvation Army thrift store shelves a century hence.  

 

The basic elements, perhaps: a tenfold increase in the global population in the last century, a vast expansion of industrialization in the Western postwar model, and considerable corruption in the Woodstock-to-Wall-Street generation that followed the generation of giants who built the place. 

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Not to use the interwebs for grousing or chuntering excessively, but this journeying isn't easy.  Away from the highways of air travel and proper hotels, one does land in the place itself.  In the pond, which is much more different from the last pond than one sunlit upland hill varies from another.  

No simple highway.

LG & Co. very strong at the Proms tonight.  Dvorak sumbime.  Seemed to be a deliberate wobbliness to the triumphs in the Sibelius that really made it interesting.

(Until the end, when it was rightly unalloyed.) 

 

 

 

It's not a disastrous place, just very underdeveloped.  It reminds me of anther city divided by a river, a bit to the southeast.  I can't help but think that part of the difficulty is that silent war. Defining your world as a marginal improvement on theirs, rather than a thing in itself, or taking a more distant model.  The nation to the northeast had less of that threat from the south, and is focused more on the northern models, to better effect.  The vibe is sort of underdeveloped small city in NJ.  Still evidence about of rougher times.  Banks barricaded behind double-door thick glass.  Was waiting between the two doors, and caught a whiff what must have been a cleaning chemical.  Essence of the visit, so far.  But time for improvement.

On the upside, found a decent English-language bookstore (unlike the US, people read here, so in all of these countries, pehaps save one, the bookstores have been ubiquitous).  Everything from abroad, though, so no translated locals.  Some of the shops in the last country made a point of setting a corner aside for translated locals, and that was always a good place to stop in for a bit. 

 

 Went on through midnight last night -- took the late morning.  The later-morning runs are really only practical in the rural areas.  In the cities, if you're not up before dawn, enjoy the coffee inside the blockhouse.

 Gently down the stream.  Well, there used to be a stream there.

In the homeland is the fullness of experience.  This is useful, as the task is to have the fullness of experience in strange lands.  Because the lands might get very strange indeed.

Not the things, not the places, but the possibility of experience that we have tied to them for safekeeping. 

 The news media, like the government, is equally a mechanism for keeping the bad people from getting away with things, and helping the bad people to get away with things.  A flourishing media scene or government can be doing either of these things.  

On this peregrination, I've tried to keep to the capitals and the tourist cities -- this is about travelling and studying while still within (a certain species of) European culture.   This isn't an Indiana Jones journey, in other words.  

That said, the southern parts of the peninsula can be a bit rough, as I discovered over the winter -- even in the larger/tourist cities.  There was a point of decision in January/February: I would either go out and buy some khakis and head into the dirty areas, or increase the amount of time at the kitchen table reading --  opted for the latter.  

I'm in one of the more decent parts of this city here, but there are still some rough edges and inconveniences, just from the nature of the place.  Far from what the locals have to go through, I'm sure, but it is a salutary reminder to stay as close to the pools of light as possible when travelling in this manner.  And there's always the table to read at.

Political coercion is not necessarily something you can identify by the clothing fashions, or even the vocabulary, of those enforcing the general compliance.  If you can't describe the way things are without getting run out of town, arguably, things have come to a pretty bad pass.

I do miss books a bit.  I've been careful to ensure that there were large research libraries nearby, whatever the nature of the times.  Given the peregrinations, though, everything's on the glowing screen of the foldable panopticon. 

On the other hand, I've been equally frustrated with the conditions of the books on occasion.  The other side of the fence is no idyll, just a marginal improvement, all told.

An ebook reader large enough to handle PDFs might be a marginal improvement, but those are still a bit pricey, and I'm wary of carrying expensive things around.  Inexpensive, interoperable, and easily replaced technology has been the watchword on these trips, and that approach seems to have worked well so far.