Which is good, as wealth, or even sufficient bakshish, has become an unapproachable dream in the present circumstances. Things were bad during the Balkan travels, I was barely scraping by and renting the cheapest places I could find. I still remember a very meaningful concert that I very much wanted to go to in Bucharest, but didn't because $20 was far above budget, and the many afternoons not spent in the Sbux of Romania, as the coffees had the same prices as Midtown. And now that things have gone from bad to worse, and I'm pining for the lean times abroad, I'm still keeping an even keel on the academic work, reading, and physical training, but the abyss of not having money is increasing in size and drawing closer. (Somehow, in this reality, abysses can move. Presumably profoundly.)
Nonetheless, I keep to my strengths, and the way of having my own existence that I know, and I intend to do that until I can't do that anymore. And at that point, well, one hopes for the resurrection.
Over Holy Week, I shifted the reading to Leibniz's theology and philosophy. Now back to boring Law things in service of an actual project, but leavened with some proper philosophy at the end of the evening to keep my mind alive. And another Knausgaard for the evenings. And the usual quotidian lectio divina from Henry James and Heidegger.
While I breathe, I hope. And I hope it won't seem colportage to point out that these are two completely independent (though harmonious) phenomena. The mind has its own life, and the mind, in this life, is the gate to the spirit.
Enter by the gate.