I do have a bit of a distinctive look, these days, with the leather hat and brown jacket.  Based on a random overhearing, there's a small chance that the narrator for the ill-sited site-specific show that ran here for a few weeks worked me into the show occasionally as "Thoreau," despite my glowering at them as I left.  (There were reasons.  "People who love people" belted out by a lounge singer twice per day in the reading room of one of the world's most essential publicly accessible research libraries.)  

Or I might have misheard.  Dewey would have liked that, I think.

Those two years or so of wandering nomadry qua exile were a bit difficult, yes, especially in terms of keeping up the work. If I had just cut loose from my projects and wandered, I would have been free for a bit, then lost.  But now, of course, I'd do almost anything to get back to those difficult days.  Almost.  (To quote Meatloaf:) I won't do that.  Not that I've been offered any, but any job that requires secrecy is most firmly, perpetually and unequivocally off the table.  

Just thought I'd put that out there, to save some time in the future.  And save the future.

--

The Jena Logic again today.  Some progress.  I'm alternating Dewey work and Hegel work, for no reason in particular.  And slowly getting the concepts that I initially merely stared at pugnaciously (in one) or glossed mindlessly over (in t'other).

Ironically, since the research libraries are filled with people not using the collections but cadging free internet and deskspace, the internet connections are very slow and dicey.  

Missing out on a lot of great classical livestreams from Europe and points east (their evening, my afternoon) as workmuzik.  First-world problems.  

(Though rarely encountered in the second world.  Romania is virtually identical with insanely high internet speeds, partially (according to rumor) because much of the network is just fiber, coax, or shielded Cat-5 nailed, tied, or taped to the telephone poles.)

 Unquestionably the most maudlin performance of Arlen and Harburg's masterpiece I've ever heard.

https://www.youtube.com/live/-nxD-x52KB0?si=7RcDXpgr6pK7GEI0

May morning again.  I remember last year, in Cluj, the trees in leaf, the sun and the breeze, running through the centuries-old university at dawn, the city largely deserted, as everyone was at their second homes in the country.  (For all the talk of being economically retrograde, a surprisingly large number of people have second homes in the country, and eat very well and clothe themselves rather nicely.  GDP doesn't touch all aspects of life.)  

Here, trapped for the nonce in the gulag panopticon of the city of the power of evil.  Mass homily brought to mind the line from Beyond the Fringe about America having such a strong sense of faith and national religion -- anticommunism.  Not exactly climbing up to the roof to sing out an exaultant Te Deum.

I'm certainly on the right side of things locally, conceptually speaking -- but it's a bit like being on the side of friend who, having won a long and bitter argument, now believes himself to have always been right about absolutely everything.  

Many mansions.