Quite the evening in the capital of the old republic of the south. An hour or so with Henry James in the Starbucks across from the legislature, then, thanks to knowledge of the alleyways acquired on my first visit (as the AirBnb was hidden within them) bypassed the most impassible of the crowds and and managed to get to the largely empty and brightly lit park by the university for a bit more of the novel on a beautiful summer's evening. Then back by the side routes. Small panic at the grocer's, as as the tenner I thought had been squirreled away in the wallet was nowhere to be found, before remembering I had some spares in the vest pocket. Quite the hubbub. Broad and general festival. Vuvuzela vendors doing a big business. Custom-printed buttons appeared to be the second item in the carts. Perhaps a means of categorizing political rallies by civility: when buttons are in play, we're a few steps removed from the barricades.
It's odd -- this is one of the few times during the present peregrination that I've been in a largely Slavic city, and it really does seem to make a difference in people's demeanour. Like walking down the street in Chicago, as opposed to a small town in the central Midwest. I'm fundamentally American, but of Slavic/German ancestry and Christian -- and the latter two bits sometimes don't go over well in the Midwest, or in NYC (although for very different reasons). Here, the people are fundamentally Slavic, and largely Christian, but reaching towards the sort of liberal politics, society, and art that America sometimes stands for. So one becomes increasingly conscious of the inherent antinomies in these views. The impulse towards one view or the other might be useful, but don't think that it's heading towards a fundamentally different type of world, in which all problems are resolved. (With the exception of religion.)
Incidentally, if things go to plan on all sides, it's my utterly uninformed and amateur guess that conflict is almost certain. There's a very large encampment of folks loyal to the Powers that Be just across the street from the spot where several hundred thousand people from all over the country are scheduled to show up. Quite a cacophony in the neighborhood now, even on a normal night. As an itinerant tourist, my Saturday-afternoon Henry James novel stands waiting for me in a room sufficiently above street level.
Update, it appears that the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition will strike their perimeter and retreat in advance of the day. Apparently announced a few hours ago. #notexpert #justawalkingaoundtheneighborhood
Interestingly, the apparent meeting point for the big weekend rally is the two statues in front of the Parliament -- possibly the first place that I visited when I first visited the city with a touring theatre company some time ago. Walked over from the hotel after arrival, just taking a first look at the city. Quite impressive. Also very suggestive of the project of Enlightenment in these parts. Two men holding back furious wild horses. Civilization and culture.
On a practical level, the thing keeping me from the customary early runs is clearly the theatregoing in the evening. After this month in the city, soaking up as much of the latter as possible, hopefully the return to the early morning hours after the difficult winter will be a bit smoother.
Gently down the stream. Take it easy, but take it.
In the local language, there is a peculiar expression: "academic citizen." Apparently achieved by earning a bachelor's degree, which is perhaps why the trade in illicit degrees for folks with only a high school education who had risen in the world flourished, both here, and in the eastern (Western) countries of the peninsula. Also on both sides (I think, though I don't specifically know the institution here), there is the veneration of the academician, which I've also seen in a lot of Russian films from the 70s and 80s.
Perhaps if these structures of society were a bit stronger stateside, the mechanisms that operated to sustain them might be a mite less corrupt. Frankly, very few people care about who an assistant professor at a local university is, much less what they do. But the social inertia, as it were, might have a useful effect on the integrity of the mechanism. Actors in their bios here, and not just the ones first starting out, mention one or two of their professors, presumably indicating both the lineage and the network of influence. People generally pay more attention to card games where the chips stand for real money.
Heretofore, the quintessential Balkan Western classical theatre moment was the one-word reply of the Captain to Viola: "Illyria." (In fairness, the 19th c. Romanian translation likely followed Pope's enjambment.)
But the closing moments of a (generally brilliantly played) Cyrano, in which a shouted "Sloboda" with fist upraised took the place of "mon panache" (I think) might now stand for the quintessence of the strong local reading.
There is a pragmatic (in the wider sense of the word) aspect to forgiveness. Part of the satisfaction, it seems, in doing wrong to people lies in the tie that afterward binds one to the other within the structures of power. One law professor, and ultimately my guess was that this was ingenuous, would boast in class gleefully about the people who thought that he had ruined their life.
If you are going to tell your own story, and by doing so tell the story of the world, you have to see that intention, and steer clear of emotionally reacting to the events. Like Cannetti's "stinger", it will obscure your understanding by drawing you into conflict, and ultimately prompt in you the very sort of behaviour you encountered. By turning the other cheek, you are maintaining dispassion, and keeping the wrongdoer from exercising that hold over your mind.
The world, which is to say your understanding of all things, is composed of people who do such things, not created by the things which are done.
So, why are you preaching to the fishes, then?
Well, I'm not trying to covert them. And I'm also not using them as a practice for trying to convince people in the future. I am maintaining the state proper to humans. An active engagement in language, commixed with moral belief. I am such that the world must remain an active proposition. And the state of that active proposition, the definition of it in patterns or reliable differentiation, as expressed in language that comes from me, is both expressive and tied to specific things in the world. If someone does find my thoughts persuasive, its likely because I set out to think, to reckon with the world in a slightly desperate sense, before I set out to express, signify, or persuade. My attempt to do so is likely more persuasive and useful than any results I might think myself to have achieved.
It's just a slightly desperate lunge towards the light before we vanish. To do so is what we are.
A day of piecework. Like a philosopher exiled to the factory town who puts bread on the table by taking in piecework from the local factory. The ethos that distinguishes the day job from the work has served me well in recent years. And one is grateful to be able to glean a means of survival for the nonce from these industrial fields.
The protests here over the weekend, at least from press reports, look to be rather large. On the order of hundreds of thousands. What makes them unique, though, if I can get the reality of it through the skillful social media manipulation that is now de rigueur for wars, protests, and large corporations, is that the event has an almost sacramental character, with many groups making the pilgrimage on foot. The narrative is that the society has crystallized around the student movements, and frequently you hear it stated that the students are to be trusted. Contrastingly, the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition is camped out in front of the President's offices, and with the polarization of recent days, is treated increasingly unkindly in the left-leaning press and by passerby. And then there are the signs which don't fit neatly into either camp. Veterans of the wars, in civilian clothes, distinguished only by their bearing and the cluster of sargeant-majors standing at a respectful distance in the shadow of the monument, as the leaders shake hands with a group of young men clearly a bit awestruck to be in their presence. Things coming together. Which is interesting.
What distinguishes this from a large DC protest stateside is that this group at least believes itself to be precisely on the centerline of the country, not the partisans of a certain faction. And with this much inertia in play on a given weekend, and with that inertial mass precisely on the centerline, there's certainly the possibility of mercurial changes in the situation. Perhaps not coincidentally, the agenda for the legislature on that day appears to be the quasi-secession of the entity to the west. This comes after a year of shared ethnic congresses, and I think a large meeting under the auspices of the church. Utter amateur at these things, and with no particular information, but there will likely be hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, positively suffused with patriotism, showing up with a need for some sort of event. The mimetic need, as Benjamin Bloch called it. Or perhaps they'll just find a way to make their society work a bit better. Traditionally, spiritual exercises are useful for that sort of thing.
As for myself, laying low is the watchword, and hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses won't be closed for too long. As an ambassador from no one in particular, I have an obligation to neutrality even greater than the ones thought up in Vienna on occasion.
Interesting, the actors at the large state theatres appear to be holding up their passports (or a similarly colored leather portfolio, roughly of passport size) during the curtain calls. (Not universally of this country, interestingly.)
Scottish play tonight. The Balkans serve as a rather effective proxy for early modern Scotland. Absolutely exhausted from watching it.
Innards roiling a bit, so I stood off in standing room. There was actually an option at the last itinerary planning point to rent a studio in a five-star resort for basically the same money, but it was all bed and couches and no desk/table. Frankly, the mens sana and corpore sano could stand a bit of ease given the long peregrination.
From my limited travels, I might say that the flower of Islam in the Balkans is Sarajevo, Mostar, Blagaj. The carvan-sarai, and the Sufi mountain retreats. The stem is the commerce of Skoder, and the earth is Albania. I found the flower very compelling and spiritually powerful. But the month and a fortnight amid the fecund earth of its roots was harrowing. Almost enough to convince me to leave the strange plants in the garden alone. But that's arguably not a wise way of gardening.
Perhaps: the Balkans are like a glass poured in the 19th century, in which certain colors reached in from the edges -- yellow from the north and west, white and red from the east, and green from the south. At the time, these were contingent, moving patterns. But in the interval, the glass has acquired its temper, and the only way of changing the colored patterns is to fracture the object -- an entity which doesn't at first reveal its own existence.
Perhaps the point of pragmatism was always that a society could be effective without attempting to describe, explain, or understand what it was doing. Understandable, given how socially-held deliberate purposes turned out in the beginning of the last century. But there is a correlative danger at the other end, perhaps.
The effective nature of shared social work continues, of course, but, again, reaching to the beginning of the last century for examples, it's possible for an effective society to be not the type of society one would want to be in, if one understood the nature of the event.
Crowds in the city for springtime. Striking contrast to last weekend, when it was empty -- perhaps because of the protests in another city. Which might seem to indicate that there will be large numbers in the capital next weekend. For some reason, going from city to city here seems easier than in the eastern (Western) Balkans. Just as easy, I suppose, but travelling from the capital there to one of the larger cities in the north is an endeavour, not the work of a morning. Perhaps because of the mountains -- and the cultural lines they created. Local press reports here suggest that the legislature will be in session considering the situation of the political entity to the west. I suppose the genius t'ai chi move would be for a government of national unity to be declared with some sort of alliance, with the ruling party stepping aside, thrilling the hundreds of thousands in the capital who have been on spiritual exercises of political/(ethnic?) unity for the last five months. Ides of March reversed. On the other hand, this is not a part of the world known for adroit acts of political t'ai chi. More the чай tea.
#amateurspeculation #tourist #ridiculouslyuninformed
(It's asserted that the diacritical alphabet here is the only major alphabet in which every sound is associated with its own unique character, and is unique to that character. Which would seem to singularly serve the essential purpose of the diacritical alphabet -- the translation point between alphabets.)
The constitution here explicitly recognizes the governing ethnicity, I think, one of the few in the world to do that, while simultaneously guaranteeing other ethnicities full rights. The national church is a key situs of that identity, which explains the sometimes contradictory politics in the port nation to the southwest. So the entity's situation, which squarely evokes the great historical conflicts of the region, in the local context, is less a distraction with foreign wars than an assertion of endogenous strength. Again, just an ill-informed tourist wiseacring.
Will be heading back to Transylvania after the Lent here, for fifty days in the highlands of Galilee. The mountains to the south were a strong allure, but in addition to keeping connected to the European culture, it seemed ill-advised to stay in a remote mountain village in a country with historical difficulties vis a vis law and order, where a sudden absence wouldn't be necessarily be marked by those immediately around me. In V, in one of Pynchon's anecdotes about the wandering British fellow in the Levant, the protagonist wonders how many more of these pools of city light he would be allowed -- it's important to take the high road, especially given the brigand nature of the times. Safety, light, and work -- and as much mountain air as possible.
The political bits also a bit surreal, watching the characters drum on the stage, with the streets filled with protesters. Reminded me of listening to an authoritarian supreme court head talk about ways of thinking about constitutional rights while (unrelated, but chaotic) protests were going on outside the window in the lobby. The events on a stage, or the thoughts from a podium, by their nature, are more carefully presented, less instinctive, and less based in social imitation. Laboratories of the spirit. Holding the nature up to the mirroring.
Was quite the decision, between the southern mountains and the northern libraries, theatres, and coffeehouses. Ultimately, I realized that when I looked at the comfortable earth-tones of the former, I was subconsciously relaxing, which made the choice for the north clear. Perhaps why the costly vacation experiences (at least in their ads) lack the ersatz comforts. Preserving the tone and life while in the mountain air. Which is usually possible, if you take the decorations down and move most of the furniture out of the way. But any middle ground between the energy of the city and the solitude of the mountain has its dangers.
The intuitive view seems to be that the corporate form is of a higher order than the state, as its progeny. But if you read the old constitutional histories of England, a private household focused on its own public image and consumer desire and capable of bringing force to bear as opportunity arose in the mesne holdings far outside of its effective ownership or control was the archaic form of monarchy.
Perhaps there is no higher form than a consciousness of the totality.
Much talk in the local press about a march on the capital planned for the fifteenth. Apparently the intention is that it will be quite large, and the organizers haven't yet said what the plans are for the day. Jarts and dominoes, perhaps.
Ides of March...
First theatregoing, the Sophocles, lost to a quasi-general strike, which mostly proved to be an afternoon out at the cafes. Which isn't insignificant. The central practice of the protest has been people standing silently together. Heidegger: being with another is distinct from inaction.
Not particularly disappointed about the Sophocles, though I'd usually tend to that sort of thing. Skipped the production in the capital to the southwest, as it looked a bit atavistic, and I was focusing on keeping things together. An elevated tone can, at times, be a life-sustaining practice. λεγειν.
The protests from Democrats continued throughout the speech, as they laughed at the president’s talking points and loudly grumbled.
Interesting. I didn't watch the tape, so it's possible that this was genuinely the event, but it's odd that the laughter and chuntering weren't events in themselves, but acts of opposition as opposed to approval. If you don't know how to think about experience, experience narrows.
Read a think-piece on the splinter futurist sect of modest size on a dark-side-Bonnie-and-Clyde run in the states. Noticed that their leader spent some time at one of the Midwestern land-grants where I studied and taught a bit. Unsurprising--precisely the sort of derangement that comes from a university that has more to do with cable (do we still call it that?) television drama than long hours in the stacks. I recognize the tone of their manifestos from the papers that I (endlessly) graded. One of the largest academic libraries on the planet, and on any given day, an infinitesimal fraction of the tens of thousands of are to be found inside. Much to do with corruption there -- and that sort of thing does have knock-on effects. The care of souls.
The analogy might be to a situation in which the Bond villains win, and take control of society, both the large systems of power and the management of small stores and cafes, and then they collectively realize that to hold power, they have to solve these problems which have nothing at all to do with their unending and eternal battle with Bond, Q., et al. As if a hostile corporate takeover had populated the Yankees bench with nepo prospects. You're still watching them try to win the game, and sort of wondering if they can. Pragmatism and corporatism. The beginning of the ebb of the state, perhaps.
Perhaps I should take up fly fishing.
Western Balkans seem to have gone from sixes and sevens to foreseeable conflict, virtually overnight. Part of the general unsettling, perhaps. Though the western part of it is a long-simmering judicial process with a foreseeable timetable. Peculiar. Some local press here explicitly linking Europa Resurgent to the contretemps, the notion apparently being that Austria-Hungary et al. are now eager to assert their protective influence in those climes. Big meeting by the local head of state tomorrow noon with an ancient ally, according to the local press.
There's a haunting image in the national museum here of 'the Germanic horde'. In fairness, that was before army units had to be Instagrammable.
Perhaps the world is controlled by conniving folks of all stripes and sorts, continually attempting to do chaotic things in order to gain power, and only held in place by the people trying to do even worse things of much greater momentum and scale who are locked in stalemate above them. Once the latter destabilizes, and there's no longer a stalemate above, the (much larger number) of people working in lower-stakes situations might see it as their hour.
Apolitical, as always. I have taken a seat in the grandstand of philosophical self-detachment. (O'Neill)
My only interest is in hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses stay open, but like any good Kantian, I have no attachment to this good, and respect the superior interests of the local folks. Apparently, the high schools have called a general strike for tomorrow; will play it by ear. Plenty of books and coffee in the rooms, should the worst come to worst.
Generally though, the city is basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election.
The primitive shaman shaking his rattle around the head of the patient prefigures, and perhaps results in, the neurosurgeon with his scalpel, millennia later. The attention, the will to accomplish something, is being preserved within the human condition within time, or perhaps acting within time, and being understood by the people within each time in a different manner. An inner realism.
Perhaps every aspect of the human exists in every age (and culture), however obliquely.
In the last country, fleeing to the Bulgarian mountains seemed like a rather good idea. (And it would have been, but one pays for rentals by the month.) But with the shift in mindset that followed, the painted churches, soft cheeses and mountain air are deferring to a more northern purposiveness. Entirely a creation of the mind, of course, but I'm feeling some regret about not taking the southern route. Almost a female presence. Echoes of an ancient Athena?
In every journey, there is the grace of arrival. The day or so to set things up. Usually, in automobiled American suburbia, this involves spending the day walking to the shops to secure the necessary goods. And then the deeper shifts start.
On one level, I'm going from forty days or so in a city that has some peculiar parallels with Odysseus' underworld to the first Christian, then republican, capital in the region. On another level, I'm going from one set of rooms to another. Opportune moments to emphasize either frame of reference.
But the lesson of antiquity seems clear -- don't run off the roof, chasing the departing ships.
ψευδο-οριζοω.
Gently down the stream... God willin' and the crick don't rise.
The last port of call was rather difficult in its own way. Certainly the closest to third-world conditions I've encountered so far. The westernmost point of the travels; the pre-Roman name was Epidamnus, which made them slightly uncomfortable. Like the Yugoslavian cargo port/resort city to the north, one of the ports across from the principal trade routes emanating from Bari (St. Nicholas, translated -- an iconic saint for commerce, and international travelers). Odysseus ventures into the underworld at his westernmost point, and there were a few uncanny experiences. The rental turned out to be about an hour's walk from the cultural sites (e.g., old Roman amphitheatre and forum), and that part of the world in February is no one's notion of an idyllic place to be, so there was much reading at the kitchen table and baking bread. The streets outside seemed not to have been washed in a long time, and there were plenty of (amiable--a characteristic of the south) strays about, so no runs, and no walks into or back from the cultural center after dark. I showered and changed clothes after each journey out, even to the grocery a short ways off -- the usual practice in southern Europe a century or two ago. The small grocers seemed like the places that I would seek out, rather than the garish national chain, but given the short stay and the non-EU food regulations, I thought it wiser to stick to the highest path, however inviting the small shops might have seemed. And after discovering a few unwanted visitors in the morning muselei, I adopted an airtight-container-only rule for the food. But there was an old-fashioned, 1950's-America type kitchen in the old masonry building, and a firm table, so it proved to be a good place to work for a bit.
Philology, particularly literature studies, is neither a science, nor an art, but a philosophy. Peculiarly, though, it's one that customarily adopts the prevailing philosophy uncritically as its own.
Don't mind me, just padding out the chapter in Bartlett's.
Was nervous about the political situation, but things are very calm, rational and economically thriving. Basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election. The odd black banner or (Cyrillic, notably) graffito. I learned in Mostar to pay attention to the graffiti in order to suss out the (hyper-)local mood.
Food prices a bit high. There's clearly an effort to make staples available -- you just have to comparison-shop the chains to find the full array. Troublingly, things like Eurocream seem to be generally made available. Le pate des bourgeois. Quite the contrast to the easten Balkans (which are the Western Balkans), where food prices are very, very good at the moment, even though the politics are similarly convoluted. Like the Greek actors, I travel freely between warring city-states, but like every 'tomato tourist', I keep a cautious eye on both the prices and the politics. On the rare occasions of looking up from the books.
Part of the reason that direct Presidential statements now seem so peculiar is that he doesn't know who he's talking to. The previous President was talking to the public as a public official, having sufficiently imagined both. He spoke to the Court of the Aeropagus and the citizens assembled on the field at Gettysburg. If you concieve of government as happening by company and enterprise, a faction seizes the mechanism of governance and runs it as a corporation. But if you conceive of government as an answer to the question of social order, you are drawn into a different relationship with the people, and you can address them in that way. There is a certain collective someone you are speaking to. The corporatist, as opposed to the publicist, has no one to address when he addresses everybody. Compare a CEO giving a general talk, and a CEO talking to the people of the company. In the first case, they simply haven't imagined the public in general. Perhaps this is why there are so many television personalities in the administration -- they have a manner and a vocabulary of speaking to all and sundry, but they haven't imagined the folks on the other side of the camera as being particularly worthwhile.
Perhaps this is another aspect of the Republic and the Machiavel. Rhetoric flourishes in the republic, or at least complete sentences. The Machiavel has a different approach to meaning. The language becomes, not strained, exactly, but where the language becomes important, they're almost at antinomy, because the Machiavel's order is originary, not classcally ordered. In making all things new, individual words take on a strange, rather than familiar, context. Think of how many debates in the first term focused on odd terms abstracted from their constitutional context -- they become headlines, or perhaps captions, and their meaning becomes the present use. Now, you can do that with individual words, but not sentences. The Machiavel sounds like a parody when he speaks, because he is waiting to one day unseat the classical order of the sentence.
None of this is criticism -- these are the two necessary aspects, synthesis and diaresis. But it is much more logical to be governed by the synthesis.
Last port of call was a bit bad, but the time before it, in Hungarian Transylvania, was very interesting. The Kruschevka housing was a bit dispiriting, but the theatre was there, and the coffee, and some (centuries-old) academic/urban energy to the place. This constant flitting is wearying. It seems as soon as my system finds the rhythm of the coffeehouse reading, and groks the local theatre, it's north/south/east/westward ho. This is another reason why coffeehouse chains are a good thing. Even when places turn them into their own sort of thing, e.g., drive-through milkshake caffeinated milkshake stores in the American Midwest. "I Have Been Here Before."(J.B. Priestley)
Travelling novel -- The Philosopher's Pupil again. Sometimes, an author can have a hidden conceit or game that ends up giving the novel structure, and the novel can be read on its own terms, without knowledge of the 'Inside Baseball' stories. But I thin, for this one you do have to know the gossip, or at least the story that was put into the mix as gossip. When you see that, and know the relationship, everything sort of falls into place. Conversely, once that reticulated, purposive structure appears, everything could equally be dismissed as just a bit of gossip. Not a rack behind.
Safe arrived at the ancient capital of the southern republic. City preternaturally quiet on a seventh-day morn. Interesting rooms in a slightly dodgy neighborhood very near the center, the dome of the parliament outside the window.
Journey difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it was the last time I followed this path, as I made sure to ask for an open car, rather than compartments -- they had to call down to the yard to check. Still, though, climate control proves elusive on this line (which, in fairness goes into the mountains at points). Exhausting journey, and then the last several hours might have qualified as a medical coma, as I didn't so much drift into unconsciousness as slip off the continental shelf of consciousness.
Interesting layover in the nation to the southwest. Walked about a mile to the banking district to see if I could get some of the destination currency. None was available, oddly. Many folks in camouflage in the banking lines. (though there was a good rate available in the station when I arrived). Then walked back to the station and then a mile in the other direction to a hardware chain that I knew had good wooden bath brushes. One should try to be the type of fellow who would walk two miles for a good bath brush. Keeping up standards. Like daily shaving in the trenches in the Great War. Surprisingly difficult to find a wooden brush in these parts, even in the German sections of Transylvania.
Just seeing the DC contretemps on the wires. First take: actually useful in some ways. One of the most ancient principles of international law is that no leader can make war when a greater leader actually has the power to order the peace. So the peace must come from an adversarial process. That goes way back, long before the days of the Universal Grotians.
Restaurant
Some say that there's a restaurant at the end of the universe. Considering what it is that organisms do and are, I think this to be an entirely reasonable synthesis of intuition. A dream or two might have suggested this as well.
Currently at my equivalent. An unremarkable Turkish-oriented easy-food restaurant in a mall. But it's open late, and its in a small city in the hills of the western Balkans. And it's across the street from the a station near the midpoint of the legendary night train from the coast.
The magic persists. The magic must persist. Else, we'll never understand everything else. The conceptual synthesis of intuition. Lege, tolle.