Another storm, another dawn chorus.
So very odd to have decided on the spur of the moment to try for evensong on Sunday afternoon -- and then the deluge. I made a similar visit on the afternoon of the "superstorm" in the mid-Aughts. I remember, almost no one was there. There was a temporary sacramental altar raised on some theatrical platforms at the crossing, and the security guards were sitting around it on folding chairs, having a loud conversation, seasoned with the customary proportion of expletives, as the storm blew against the clerestory windows. Afterwards, I went back the apartment in Inwood by means of the wooded trail. Without exaggeration, there were trees crashing down around me. But this is the nature of the earth.
The practical and pragmatic (only in Kantian philosophy, et seq., are these terms almost opposites) difficulties were the most significant difficulties in the present storm. As I'm operating in significantly reduced circumstances, not having access to the usual common resources made things difficult, and more importantly, made the time less purposive, though I did manage to do a bit of serious reading and almost finish a (very) minor Henry James novel.
In my country, it can be surprisingly difficult to find a place to read sometimes. I remember one afternoon on a holiday when I was studying at Illinois -- a small town, everything closed. There was simply nowhere to go. Increasingly, the society forces people back to their private property, reducing the commons, perhaps because of the types that it attracts. Property exerts a force against the unpropertied. There was a fascinating historical sign (university town) in that town detailing the spirited public debate at the turn of the last century (or perhaps slightly before) on the question of putting in a public drinking fountain. Contrast the tradition in the east of trusts and foundations making it a point of honor to build fountains in front of mosques and in the towns. Munificence. Andric's Bridge Over the Drina. At the foot of the mountains in Bulgaria that I visited recently, there was a fountain of groundwater constantly running, and I noticed a constant stream of locals driving over to fill up their gallon bottles and flasks. I never did trust the tap water in the Balkans, and most of the locals apparently felt the same way. The Bulgarian mountain was the exception, though. The grocery shopping was a weekly trip into town, so porting water back wasn't feasible. I never did taste the groundwater directly, though, as local habits might not always change with the changes in the water quality.
The stoup of sacred water at the church door looks odd to me now. Of course, a longstanding practice -- the Renaissance courtiers occasionally rushing to the font to grab a handful of water to offer to an object of their affections. But after you see the fountains in front of the mosques, the thought arises that the touch of water might not always accomplish the work of water. Hence the tendencies to full immersions in protestant movements like the Baptists and the Baptist, perhaps.
I'm extremely fatigued, and not just after the last two days and the storm. The ability to simply survive things does breed a certain lack of focus, a sort of infantry reflex in which plodding, bleary-eyed seems to be sufficient to accomplish the task. To preserve the energy of the soul, which is to say, the geist of the transcendent.
Excelsior.
(A strange device.)