Evening walk along the quay that I had hoped would be my dawn run, until a bit of an injury intervened.  Not catastrophic, but the sort of thing that if not given time to heal, might have persisted for some time, so I just focused on the desk time.  It's a remarkable city, definitely one of the places in the region I would seek out if I jumped over here for something more than a peregrination.  Perhaps a year sometime to do some proper writing (Master & Margarita again).  A book-lined apartment in an old concrete building somewhere.  The politics and religion would be the difficult bit, but it's hardly an issue in daily life, more of a gestalt thing.  

The general outline of the visit was a month of theatregoing in the center of things, followed by a fortnight at the desk in the periphery.  Admittedly about a third of the theatregoing/concertgoing ($5/$6 tickets, for the most part) was lost to the political unrest, but the balance sufficed.

My second visit to this place.  The danger of the second visit is a bit like trying to repeat a moment in a play that worked rather well the night before.  Unconsciously, all of your energies go to placing yourself in that position, around these certain things that you remember as meaningful, in an attempt to conjure the initial magic of it.  Then you slowly realize what you're doing, and begin again to look at the things around you as if for the first time, remembering their originary force when you first encountered them.

Looking forward to the third time already.  I'm told that it's the charm.

 

 

 I continue to think that the Matrix films were generally right, in an even stronger manner than the Baudrillard-based distortions of reality.  Which are actually pretty uncontroversial.  It's stronger than that.  Until the false glazing of the normal way that things are with the world, the schein, the vague sense of everything in existence -- until this vanishes, you honestly can't tell a good thing from a bad thing.

Hence, perhaps, there is some danger in putting all of your writing out there, as opposed to filling notebooks on the desk.  As Plato pointed out, once you've written something, there's no telling who might pick it up.  Beyond the risk of gaslighting, there's also the certainty that much of it wouldn't chime with the way folks think about the world after watching television for a few hours.

Nonetheless, I've gone toe-to-toe with some rather interesting folks, and in every encounter, the open book has been clearly the right way to go.  It might not make much sense, and it might be taken to be something that it isn't, but it will all be very necessary in the end.

Abraham Lincoln used to ask a certain riddle: If people decided to call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs would horses have?  

The answer is, of course, four, because deciding to call a horse's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.  But it's perhaps revealing that a late 19th c. American lawyer would think of this.  Pragmatically, in the language game one could play as if one played no other, if the expected answer was five, then five would be the correct answer.  There, social norms govern the meaning.  We've decided that certain things are quarks and opossums, and certain other things aren't, and these are our ways.

But this is why it becomes important that (late 19th c./early 20th c.) pragmatism is a species (or perhaps a descendant) of idealism, not empiricism.  The ability to shift the language norm comes from the fact that the idea itself (that there is a thing called a horse) governs the positivist, empirical, long-settled, ultimately meaning-giving horse-leg-counting process. And that idea can be changed.  The change in the idea would be the thing that governed the change in the normative constraints on speech, not some private contract as to language use.  When social norms make changes in language use (in ways not directly governed by personal power), it is because something is revealed by the new usage that seems more valuable than the work the old usage was doing.  

So, to sort of bring this together, Abe is right.  If everyone decided to change a norm within a language, precisely because the scheme was sufficiently plastic to do this, the idea must be the source of the meaning, and not the long-settled empirical processes of verification.  They simply wouldn't be able to do it without a more convincing idea.  Without a vision, the people perish.

Perhaps.

Aristotle defines three types of pseudos -- the thing that is false (e.g., fool's gold); the thing that is spoken about falsely, and the person who is false.  The critical point is that the first two allow us to see the possibility of the third.  Otherwise, we would just have to assume that the person whom we encounter is playing certain games of language and action in a grand bid to prevail in life, and we needed merely to enter the game.  On the contrary, it is possible for someone to go against their basic social role in a way that makes him or her so difficult to understand, that we continue to think about them according to their formal role, but know this cognition based in appearances to be false (1); and it is possible for people habitually to use language in a way that doesn't allow the alethic elements of speech to do their work (2).

Western society, particularly in its pragmatic, commercial aspects, has chosen to disbelieve in the possibility of this third risk, figuring that the effective people would merely rise.  And, in fact, the industrial forms have been thriving.  But systematically disbelieving in the possibility of personal falsity in the interests of game-playing seems a risk, and again, perhaps historically a bit unique.

If the industrial forms continue to flourish, and the trucks of frozen hamburgers continue to roll in every few days, the only indication that things might be a bit wrong is the slow discovery of the nature of the people around you, and the events within the apparent world, as they unfold.

So, perhaps, gently down the stream.  With care to the surroundings.

 #cloudyday

 At that moment, he was coming in from the countryside. He happened to be passing by when he unexpectedly found himself caught up in a drama that overwhelmed him, like the heavy wood that was placed on his shoulders.

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250413-omelia-palme.html 

This is interesting.  In the section below as well, there's the suggestion that those who are accidentally suffering are carrying the cross as well.  Having been wandering through a part of the world where different faiths have been trying to vindicate themselves for centuries, you can definitely see certain "types" of society associated with the different faiths and confessions.  The notion that those suffering within these societies, say, for example a Christian culture, in an entirely incidental manner--but in a way that would not be occurring if the society was not caught up in the work of social progress, that the suffering is united in a sort of Cyrenian way, even absent consciousness of the specifically Christian character of the difficulty.  

Difficulty: does that mean that someone who suffers because an Islamic society is trying to change the world is outside the specifically redemptive suffering?   

Imagine two Simons of Cyrene.  One knows of Jesus, the other doesn't.  The second actually carries the cross.  The first carries Dismas' cross, but identifies his difficulty with those of Christ.  

Perhaps the answer is that the initial perception of the situation doesn't govern.  The Cyrenian didn't know what he was doing when he began to do it, but then perhaps he noticed something.  Perhaps the one in a foreign culture who identifies his sufferings with those of Christ comes to understand, by this attempt at understanding, that they're distinct from them.  But the disposition is to questioning the difficulty, coming to understand its nature.  Not just submitting to the difficulty without willing it, letting the compulsion be determinative. To understand the difficulty, not in a pragmatic sense, but in a teleological sense.  The whole point of the exercise is that the nature of the difficulty--as difficulty--ultimately isn't determinative.  Its meaning is determinative.

Preprandial: Focusing my mind--after the long day of walking through the city in the heat of early spring--on a very interesting and authentic Cavallerria Rusticana from the afternoon.

 

 

I've been trying to find, among many other things, places where I can do some work in the more formal style, as opposed to the desert-island apodictics (which sometimes actually turn out well).  In particular, I think this would be the time to look at a legal history of the corporate form -- in the Hegelian sense of the history; analyzing what we thought we were doing when we unleashed the forms of these companies of discovery and invention, derogating or devolving their power from the monarchs.  One of the interesting untold stories of early modern England is how many people were digging up their estates in commercial frenzy in Leicester's Commonwealth.  In addition to companies sent off to Muscovy and the Indies, and the monopolies that consolidated trade, mineral development of land assets was very much on the uptick.  Some interesting cases about which of the rocks inherently belonged to the freshly protestant throne.  

It seems that we're presently on the brink of a sort of axial shift away from the world of public law and towards the corporate state model.  Populating social forms of industry from among the population, as opposed to structuring the republic.  But people still seem to behave politically as if the state were distinct from corporate interests.  This isn't a question of corruption, it's a shift in the nature of the state.  And now, we're to the point at which people think it right that those excluded from the social forms of industry have no productive place in the society.  Which would be all well and good, if that were to be the ordained and established rule of the society, but I can't help but think that at some level, the people are still mentally, despite the economic reality, within an ordered republic, or even a kingdom.  (The old Roman epitaph for the generals: "They did not despair of the republic.")  Perhaps the modern voters even make the current politics into a semblance of a kingdom in order to ratify that belief against economic reality.

The real scholarship on the corporate form, reaching to its earliest antecedents in the context of natural law, is Gierke, mostly untranslated, although Maitland famously translated one of the books.  

Just one of the things percolating in the mind.  As the semaphores from the passing academic ships grow less frequent, I'm actually shifting my thoughts to more essential thoughts.  Fleshing out the philosophical worlds that I made quick tracings of in the dissertation, keeping connected to the theatre as a sort of touchstone.  German enlightenment, and its correlates in modern analytic philosophy.  And that's probably the right way to continue, as the essential nature of the thought keeps the mind focused on a day-to-day basis.  

The received wisdom in most fields is that if you're not in one of the top few programs in a field, it really doesn't matter what you write about in school.  And if people had the slightest notion of what happens, given that license, at the state universities, we'd likely go back to having normal schools only (schoolmarm training).  But, despite the fact that I found myself in a bit of a swamp in my department, I took enough classes across campus in philosophy and history to develop the sensibilities and research skills sufficiently so that I know what to look for, and how to think about it when I find it.  

So I do have a principal project in the mind, should the opportunity arise.  But for now, continuing the more essential philosophy, faith, and aesthetics (theatre).  Given my druthers, I'd like to think about these things and shape them to a coherent form.  I would read, write, and think about these things if I found myself on a desert island with no prospect of leaving.  But if I were to play a more formal part in the academic industry, I certainly would know what I would want to bring to their attention, and could likely put something worthwhile together.

On the other hand, perhaps, like Auerbach and Adorno, I should write as if there would be readers, even in the present peripatetic times.  And if I were still in the city, I might do that.  The Rose room would be a congenial place for such a thing--there are probably a dozen such projects being pursued in it every day.  But there are certain differences between the cases of Auerbach and Adorno and my present situ.  For the nonce, at least, I should probably continue to work according to transcendent principles. Those of which I can honestly say I can do no other.  Actually learning quite a bit about both the older philosophies and the more recent thoughts along those lines.

 In contrast to earlier visits (on my first visit, not only did I frequent the patriarchal cathedral and the large cathedral (odd--Rome does that too), but I was at the midnight Easter service at the latter, and it was my principal point of memory for the city in the interval.  But given some recent experiences in the churches of the national church, quite understandable given the present politics, I've been respecting their discipline, and (on my own initiative) staying clear, except for the occasional visit to the parish near the seat of government, built in the early 20th c. Some rather extraordinary dreams, though.

 From my windows here, I can see a long-abandoned (at least, I've never seen it unlocked) small Catholic church.  On one of the first days, there was an extraordinarily large and clear rainbow across the panorama, landing directly at the church.  Or perhaps it was to the Orthodox monastery nearby, which seems to be quite thriving.  (It doesn't seem large enough to be a monastery.  Perhaps it's like the Romanian manastre, which seems in my (quite likely mistaken) experience, to be frequently used to designate a church.) Though the peals I hear are Latin peals, not Orthodox peals.  Perhaps another nearby church.  Quite a few of them about.

 Long walk around some unfamiliar parts of the city on a warm spring day.  Political festival was in the streets by the Sbux that I had mentally figured on for a post-Passion Sunday Americano, so I ducked into the one in the tourist quarter for a bit.  Very scrupulously avoiding all the politics--didn't even leave the rooms on the day of the big rally last month.  Ended up taking a long loop around the new city.  Many miles circling, after the 2 hr. direct walk in.  Absolutely exhausted at the end.

The background music at the cafes and stores here is odd.  Basically the 1980s AM radio catalogue, almost invariably in English, but redone, evened out, usually heavily auto-tuned, likely by artists signing away perpetual worldwide rights in exchange for the delivered lunch and the demo tape.  A cult of authenticity, and close listening to phonographs might be opportune hereabouts.  Some exceptions to the muddle: I still treasure the moment in which I walked into an underground grocery at an intersection, and the Gypsy Kings' "A Mi Manera" started up.  But for the most part, English.  A bit like the Christmas fair music in Hungarian Romanian Transylvania, also almost invariably in English.  The relics of St. Nicholas were after all, translated to the trade center of Bari, and became a merchant cult.  The saintly gift-giving bishop.  In many places hereabouts, Latin Christianity stands for commerce, and the old empires of the north.  

All things to all people.  Actually, this is the need for the universal church, one not defined by any understanding of it outside its central truths.  Even though it does exist to these people principally through the means of these understandings.  But the phenomenological context also bears the mystery, which is to say, the sacrament.

https://www.prairiehome.org/shows/58155.html   #saturdayradio

 Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad...

To drive the human from the ground of the human.  Because, bluntly put, a human grounded in the human could defy them. And madness is the honor of strange gods.

---

In the history of pigeons, a species that sort of reveals to city-dwellers how far they've been driven from their own self-possession, as the city transforms the form of a bird into a neurotic, pacing, circling, twitching thing, it apparently has never occurred to a single one of them to fly straight up for as long as they could, just to see what was there.  (Or if it has, if there has been the occasional Cortez or Columbus of the species, they vanished, and the habit never caught on.)  This is perhaps because a pigeon knows what it is to be a pigeon.  An internal map of a relatively modest territory to be traversed at relatively low altitudes is what gives them meaning as themselves, and they would likely think it a negation of their own nature to investigate a high cloud one day.  

Perhaps our grounding as ourselves does give us strength and a measure of self-possession.  The sorts of things that would likely prove essential at moments of daring attempt.  When we dare, we dare as ourselves.  

------

 

Another Holy Week.  Not to cast oneself up into it, not to honor it as a strange constellation that has suddenly hove into view,  but to observe it.  As ourselves, in self-possession and recollection of the event.  To honestly observe the feast.

They've torn down the Hotel Yugoslavia, by the way.  The ghosts of thousands of Moscow apparatchiks vacationing in the warm south by the Danau must be a bit confused.  And sold the downtown bombed buildings to New York developers.  Perhaps they'll sell the Zemun air command center to the Chinese or the Russians, and the Sava will again divide the worlds.

 Revisiting, as usual, Mann's Joseph cycle for the holiday.  His Egypt is America, I think.  The refugee view, at least.  From the customs at the ports, to the customs of the cities (which perhaps could be specifically associated with some careful scholarship). The old-world refugee intellectual, in the context of the alliance in the world war, with perhaps a tincture of Scheherazade, was trying to tell us something.

Jacobi's criticism of Kant's system is unintentionally revealing.  "Without this thing (the thing-in-itself), I cannot enter the system, and with it, I cannot remain in the system."  

A philosophical system is not a book within which one can eternally dwell.  It is a method -- met/odos, "with road."  A path that, on balance, seems wiser than the others, and leads one to a useful place.  The fact that the dualism of the thing in itself makes it impossible to think that Kant's system has resolved the mystery of human existence is the system's greatest virtue, pointing us squarely at the right spot as we look beyond the place where we stand.  

Relatedly, coming to understand that the pragmatism that I've been crusading against is in fact the overwhelmingly preponderant misunderstanding of the doctrine, which is actually a species of idealism.  And yet, taking these facts as true, according to the lights of the doctrine itself...

 Looking out on the massive concrete apartment houses of Brutalism.  Taken as buildings, as buildings are usually thought of, the preponderance of the critics are right.  But this merely tells us about what criticism is intent on doing in the world.  The point is that the better way to think about a building, closer to what it is in itself, is a place for all of these people to live.  Whatever their station in society, to have libraries of philosophy, enlightenment literature, facsimiles of the ancient texts, and a solid table or two.  In this culture, this was the explicit hope.  But very few of them live in that manner now, and perhaps, like the people in every other country, very few of them ever did, despite (or perhaps because of) the inexpensive ideological publishing houses, which were seen as a legitimate extension of the state.  In the event, the humans didn't wish to live in that manner.  It's an odd species.  Bit capricious. 

Very little discussion, if any, in this part of the world about the hazards of aerated concrete. (Contrast the Roman concrete, still going after two millennia.)  Apparently still being widely used.  Might be an issue (or worse) in a decade or two. #notexpert

 Not at all an economist, but as a few interestingly placed stores yesterday recalled, what sunk the veer rightward in the UK recently was the cost of financing government debt, after the costings on the changes were published.  Treasury yields seem to be on the uptick; I suppose the next gradation of the news cycle would be some hard math on the up-front costs actually being incurred.  #notexpert

Of course, another interesting thing about the UK example is that the PM's rival and successor was likely in the city, actively briefing against the plan.  If this veer does go south due to these sorts of hard costs, the second-order danger might be an emerging internal logic that everyone needs to follow the chosen guide--or else. 

Noted on the first day of the administration that the internal civil-service noncompliance terms were very odd.  Sometimes there's a bit of an art in determining which aspect of the universe is next in the great spinning-wheel slot machine of eternal return.

 One thing I've noticed about this city--mostly from things I've seen online, but occasionally in person: citizens and police will occasionally get into an argument in which both sides believe that they are right, and that reason will eventually vindicate their view, and resolve the argument accordingly.  I'm not sure if they realize how rare that has become.

 Bloodied but unbowed.  (Which, as Sam Weller hastens to point out, is also the condition of a mobster's violin, purchased only for the case.)

 Interesting, the governing party looks to be holding a large rally in the city this weekend.  I'm far enough on the periphery now that it shouldn't affect me, except for the Sunday walk in for Mass and coffee.  The general plan for this visit was a month in the center to see as much theatre as possible (managed about 2/3 of the plan, despite the cancellations from strikes and marches), and then a fortnight on the periphery to write.  A few factors have combined to keep me from the AM runs, but still hoping to get back to that discipline soon.  

 Perhaps an inherent aspect of superpower-scale states: if you go to the political or cultural centers, you have to play along with the darker aspects of the game, or you find yourself without the ability to secure the basic necessities.  And perhaps only networks with this level of personal domination are capable of creating continent-wide schemes of force.  Perhaps it was the same in old Rome, or early modern London, and with the flourishing of mechanized industry, there's now much less starvation in the streets--in places, none at all, even with the population (mostly workers) multiplied tenfold in the last century or so.  But the thought persistently recurs that the plan in Philadelphia, Virginia, and Boston a few centuries back was for a considerably lighter yoke and burden vis-a-vis the state.