The objective for today was, of course, to return to the possibility of thought, after the two days of blizzard. This is a very real thing, and I have to think that folks in the Siberian camps faced this as well, since bearing with extraordinary physical and social difficulty makes it hard to hold the Fourth Paralogism of Kant in the mind long enough to figure out how things stand with respect to it.
Thinking with unconcealed envy of all those months I had in southern Europe in which once the mind-numbing work of the day was done, I had a place to work and write and think, and possibly even head out to the theatre or a coffeehouse. Not having been able to do proper writing then was the big mistake. I wasn't yet ruthless enough.
To be absolutely clear: my claim is that this existence, which has gone on for many years, is the physical equivalent of the gulag, and the causation for it is my politics (or lack thereof) and religion (but/for cause) and my refusal to go along with corrupt things (proximate cause).
Dostoevsky apparently wept when he read Hegel's opinion that he, being in Siberia, was outside of history. While I do consider myself a Hegelian, I don't consider effective history to be an effective notion anymore. There are simply many people telling stories. The machines they are using to tell stories have a peculiar hold over the mind. History, as a description of present events, has become the means of placing its listeners outside history. It is much more important to focus the mind, and 19 c. books and private thought will suffice for that. In the days to come, history will vindicate its own deprecation.
You have to get free of them -- and for this, one of their early slogans will suffice:
Cultivate your own garden.