The spring appears to have shifted tactics from years past. Instead of blurring the cold and the hot seasons, and averaging out the temperature increase, it's simply intercalating August days with October days. Today, quite warm -- the social forms are very enervated. Dangerous times for the son of man.
It's not just that the heat makes people who are associated under questionable notions of the shared good do bad things, although that is the case. The very shared reality of the place is constituted by this increased life. They wouldn't believe it if you told them that, as a seasoned observer of people in public parks and other areas amenable to reading books and drinking coffee, I can distinctly see that, compared to other groups of people in the world, they demonstrate less of a civilizational context and act in a more craven manner. They don't believe that anything extraordinary will come of humanity, and refuse to acknowledge the prospect of God. They're simply trying to get more things, and so their comportment towards the possibility of encountering others or understanding larger truths is reduced to commercial transactions and television.
Went for a run in the park, on the old route, before lifting. My first run since arriving in mid-November (as it was warm enough to not need cold running togs, and laundry was to be done later in the morning anyway). Very different crowd, and much more crowded than in the early Aughts. The run to the reservoir and around (only one lap, as I was lifting afterwards) was very familiar ground. But then, from the reservoir to the park gate, despite the fact that I had entered the park right at the opening time, I was surrounded a few times by the running clubs -- very annoying people who smell like unventilated New Jersey apartments. Like the large agricultural operations in the Midwest, when you have that many organisms packed together, the smell is magnified. But the first bit of the run was nice.
Apparently, the city running clubs are a worldwide thing. Saw one in Belgrade on my last visit--the fact that an injury kept me from running every morning on Zemun quay still irks me.
Requested a few Bosnian novels from the deep archives of the library. As I've been through all of Andric a few times, I thought I'd check out the newer stuff.
Genuinely not just whistling Dixie when I talk about the character of the times and how much I need to get away from here. A life takes on a shape, and after the childhood and early years shaped my my folks and their professional difficulties, and then encountering extraordinary corruption on the three paths I tried, I've developed a very private, but true way of working. That is the shape of my existence, and travelling and exploring and working privately will preserve what this city is even now trying to erase. Something will come of it, with respect to the larger world, but my focus is not on encountering or trying to change the world, but in clear-eyed study and writing, and deepening my knowledge of the time.