Up past midnight rebuilding the netbook. It's the sort of computer that folks likely would consider not worth the risks of theft, but the fact that makes that so also does other things in the world.
Gently down the stream, stream permitting.
Google appears to have de-indexed the "ephemera" part of this site. Spent some time on the seach console figuring it out, and there are a few oddities. Can't say that I blame it. Taking up valuable disk space that might be used for the things that people customarily use the internet for. Will continue puttering around to see if I might have missed a trick.
Looks like I left the last country just in time. Some of those riot images are places I was walking through & reading in a couple of weeks ago. Some interesting goings-on near the end sugggested to the (perhaps overly imaginative) observer that it might not be the best time for an American to be wandering around. And the rooms were very bad. But a decent, prosperous, and hospitable country (with reasonably priced Starbucks coffee--like NYC in the early aughts). And the capital of the old Republic. Listened to the live Bayreuth stream of Rheingold (from a Sbux) while watching night fall on the legislature's building, and the lights come on. Bit magical.
Like every country, its problems are its own, and should be sorted by the folks with a legitimate interest in the matter. #primedirective
Still mulling the notion that the fantasy novels of Tolkein (read only once or twice) and C.S. Lewis (re-read yearly) have their sources in undisclosed wartime travels in the Balkans and elsewhere. Lunatic notion, but the second Lewis novel has clear resonances with his American travels, and the others seem to have a similar verisimilitude -- and the overarching theme is an Englishman type coming into contact with distant cultures. And then there's the powerful City contacts of Charles Williams. (My hierarchy puts him between the two.)
Every work of fiction is an invitation to fictionalize the life of the author.
One trick in securing the housing is to find a place somewhere between the cobblestoned tourist-catering places and the hobbit villages. Clearly, the present booking has landed me far afield into the latter. Much like the place in German Romanian Transylvania some time ago, the only difference being that the neighbors' chairs facing the windows are much closer here. Will be a bit of an exercise in dispassion. Om.
Quiet day. The goal was to sit quietly and read. Restoring a bit of the focus that was lost last month in the inner-city rooms. Quite successful for most of the day.
To be productive, occasionally you need to think of yourself as an animal, and cause the animal to do the useful things by manipulating surroundings and habits. While always reserving the capacity of free will that could accomplish everything in an un-caused and spontaneous fell swoop of success.
Gently down the stream.
Postprandial cinema: Trial and Error (The Dock Brief), 1962. John Mortimer play, on Broadway the previous year, adapted for film with Peter Sellars. The Proto-Rumpole. Very mid-century UK, a bit like a J.B. Priestley, with morals and apercus of a masonic tincture scattered in among the macarizing. Worthwhile.
Pisistratus is still the classical paradigm, perhaps. Some of the details are almost eerily on-point. A tyranny brought to power by the people over the oligarchs. His supporters wearing characteristic garments that one historian said kept them on the farm because they looked ridiculous in the cities. Reaching out to the conventionally highly-regarded poets and writers, so long as they wrote in service of his golden age.
I have to wonder if part of the chaos in the country now is from no one explaining the different thories of power, how they relate, and which of them (after a pragmatic alliance with the right-wing think tanks), has suddenly come into almost unchecked power.
These are the corporate types of New Netherlands. This is a specific theory of power, and virtue (Weber, Gierke, etc.). Instead of voting for their own representatives, the people voted for their neighbors' boss, in the hope that their neighbors would get what was coming to them. And now, at least for the nonce, it's America, Inc.
That's the dark view. There's another way of seeing it, in that very old forms of statecraft are being used in the manner of free-enterprise corporations, and there's an outside chance that new forms of statecraft might result.
It's a vertiginous moment, and one that could still go either way, but very few people seem to realize the nature of the event, and the history of these forms. Or how far we might be from the ground.
I see that India is trying to get a handle on the stray dog problem, interestingly through judicial means. When the poor neighborhoods are marked by hungry, roaming, suffering carnivorous animals, civilization needs to adjust a few things. Those in the neighborhoods come to symbiosis with them, of course (with lapses and exceptions), but I can vouch for the fact that they have a different approach to the stranger.
The northern countries have solved the problem admirably by sterilizing them and leaving them in place, but the root of it is that people bring them into the place and then cast them out.
Local strays I've encountered have seemed quite docile. Much more like the country to the west in that respect than the one to the southwest.
I'm not exaggerating the noxiousness of Balkan smoking and vaping. Part of the culture, so you just have to accept that the air will be a bit poisoned in the polis. One reason the morning runs are always calculated to hit the point between the dogs and the first waves of smoking/vaping humans on the sidewalk. Inter canem et lupem.
Walked through an absolutely noxious cloud on the way to the grocery. It's a bit like biking through Harlem -- once you have the first indication of the scent, you try to figue out the vapor trail and pick another vector. Thought I might need a month of detox afterwards. And then, in the evening, to the old market on the apparently largely Muslim side of the river, though in fairness the constant mild tincture of sweetness in the air from the vapes was likely coming from the crowds of visitors. Walked to the mosque at the top of the hill, with the path ending in a sort of parking lot. Perhaps the wrong approach. Walked back down the other side of the hill, past a sort of WSQ 5-on-5 halfcout setup. Some decent shooting, but defense is not an emphasized skill here, nor apparently is rebounding -- the latter ceded by common consent to the tallest fellow underneath. Perhaps a hesitancy from politeness.
Admittedly, a vegetarian nonsmoking actor from the city would always have some difficulties in this part of the world. On the other hand, the ubiquity of smoke in the American downtowns now is one reason why I think it would be unlikely that I would head back to a big city. Dope the ghetto. Interesting times.
When in a difficult situation, the most important thing is to keep the situation clear. The international law of armed conflicts began by forcing the warmakers to make clear the beginning and end of the conflict, who and what was involved, and what they were seeking. This took centuries.
Present ways are different than this -- think the John Houseman character in Three Days of the Condor: "I miss the clarity."
Some difficulties arise when not all of the secrets belong to you, of course. But making the the situation clear out of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind can be accomplished with the necessary discretion. Whether it will be at all effective, or really, if anyone will notice, is a secondary concern. Always ensure that your derring-do is under the right flag, nailed to the mast if necessary.
Feast of the Assumption.
In which I remember arriving in a new city to begin graduate study, not having secured an apartment in advance. (Such things were possible, once.) Walking through the carnival for the feast in the old Italian neighborhood, asking at the raffle table where there might be listings for apartments. They pointed me to the rectory next to the old brick church. I knocked at the door and asked if they knew of anyone looking to rent an apartment. They went back into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a typed list, using which which I found an upstairs one-bedroom in an old wooden building a few blocks away.
One of the first things I bought were some small basil and oregano plants, kept on the old kitchen counters. The orchestra was a short walk away, and the tickets were inexpensive. The brand-new university library wasn't immense, but it was sufficient. The artistic studios were the same rooms that were in use in the 1920s and 1930s, in the first popular flourishing of the modern American arts. It was a beginning.
Commemoration is memory. Remembering is an action; it can either be the case or not be the case. Simply speaking the word "memory" isn't some sort of a spell that can provoke the condition. You must do these things, however small and insignificant they might seem.
Interesting, one detail that I missed in the last country: the derisive name of the youth coalition supporting the government is a malapropism suggesting a spelling error in Cyrillic when trying to write "students". Basically the "skollers".
The academic structure is taken much more seriously in this part of the world. Having a degree effects a qualitative change; you become an "academic citizen." Professional actors list their professors in their bios throughout their career. Random choruses of the Gaudeamus break out at bus stops and lunch-counters... [no]
The "unfinished solution" approach the protest groups have been taking there is interesting. Still not quite sure what to think of it.
In fairness, the title "students" isn't a name without negative connotations, when it comes to political groups -- cf. Afghanistan.
Never expect vindication. They're using that stick for other things now.
By all means, if you know a particularly worthwhile circle and want to attempt to convince them, that might be a good idea. But don't launch yourself into the world with a lantern in the expectation that the great and the good yet unknown will recognize the truth in your reasoning.
Contrary to much of the prevailing philosophy, it is possible to observe, and to reason, and to understand within private experience. Kant never left his city; Socrates left only to serve in the foreign wars. The ability to think the critical thought, and the ability to speak to others about it are equally necessary things -- neither can substitute for the other, and both must be the case.
Also, they're not the same thing.
Feast of Maximilian Kolbe. Travelled the world, became an influential scholar using the latest means of the mass media of the time, and yet even within his cult, largely only remembered for the manner of his death.
Perils of not getting a decent autobiography to an influential publisher before the deluge, perhaps. Though arguably that's not the best use of the brief candle.
No special knowledge or insight on this, but -- if you look at the projections on most European maps of the Crimean area, Sevastapol seems to be just an enclave off to the side. About a year ago, I noticed an old Russian naval map that put the port at the center, and it makes a very big difference. The mineral resources and ethnic populations are of course factors as well, but if you look at the land taken in the present conflict, there seems to be a good chance that the incentive to do so came from trying to protect the place where they keep all the boats.
Another 19th c. view:
The highlight of recent months was undoubtedly the Comedie Francaise performance in Budapest. Back balcony, about $7. Amplified, but still, the Alexandrines -- the verse. (Marred slightly in one scene by the older woman a few rows down pulling open a beer tab to the general amusement of the section. I imagined her to be an anarchic former actress of the company.) Not a touring production, a cultural exchange of a recent show. A brief glance at the distant homelands of the spirit -- 'but to whet thy almost-blunted purpose.' Looking further back, the Normandy Moliere piece and the Noh pieces at the Transylvanian theatre festival brought similar, and similarly brief, illuminations.
In the depth of the winter in the Jedi city, I survived by purchasing a month's access to the London stage tapes web channel -- just listened to (and occasionally watched) the tapes from the last two RSC seasons: the λεγειν. And Wodehouse adaptations from time to time. Preserving the ability to reach into experience with the mind. We weren't put here just to survive the experience.
The mind keeps returning to the beginning of charging admission in the early modern English travelling theatre. Something happened there, perhaps, when the (already divided) Reformation met the empiricism prevailing on that island, especially in the colder and cloudy northern bits.
There is an epistemological argument for the apotheosis of the currency, and it traces to the beginning of the last century. Basically it runs something like this -- we are inculturated with old habits of mind that have become unproductive, and led to things like war, papistry, etc., and the best way to live is to do what works, and the gaining of the dollar is therefore the objective indication that you're doing the right thing. A very darksome view would see this at the root of much of the know-nothingism, the explicit anti-Catholicism prevailing at the land grant universities of the 19th c., etc. A kingdom of moral ends, that first light of the enlightenment, actually confounds this worship of wealth, so having a moral center is made identical with conceptual and ethical notions about the physical body.
And this epistemological sense is at the root of the actual glee that some have when seeing others without money. Avarice has its reasons. It's just that they're not very good ones.
There's no easy answer. These truth-seekers and fellow travellers who have been fighting each other, over the last couple of centuries especially, have distilled various necessary elements of larger truths within their fenced-off private domains, and you do have to try to understand everything in order to get anywhere.
No simple highway.
When landing on a market-based, advantage-seeking planet, you have to know how to get where you're going, while losing as little as you can. The exchange rates at the bus terminal were actually fair, a small spread between the buy and sell points. Bypassing the half-dozen invites for taxi rides on the way out, I went up to the only licensed vehicle I could see, and he quoted ~$12 USD for a 2 mile ride. I left without comment, but checked the other entrances, as it was after dark, and I wasn't exactly sure of the way. Unfortunately, the line of licensed cabs at the doner kebab were all out of service, so I shouldered my bags, checked my compass, and headed off into the night.
As it turned out, everything was safely lit, and I was walking through the town center on a summer evening, so it was quite pleasant. Got a first orientation (I had looked at online maps before arriving, and sketched out a rough plan of the town) about a third of the way there from a tourist map, and then got my bearings from the Catholic cathedral. I checked en route, but since I had written down the second name of the street rather than the first, the polite elderly fellow taking out his trash merely gave a friendly shrug, which I returned with a knowing smile and wave. After 2/3 of the journey, I was reasonably sure I was on the correct road, but had no idea how to mark the right cross-street, so I asked a cab driver at another doner restaurant, who good naturedly gave directions (which were undoubtedly logical for a cab mindset, but pointing back to the main road and saying that it was the next big intersection would have worked as well). I thanked him, but just before setting out, decided to take the cab instead, at the quoted rate of ~$6, as the evening was growing late.
Then a quick walk around. ~$8 for 2L of milk, two packages of crackers, three liters of water, 100g of coffee at the convenience store found on Google Maps, then walking about discovered a proper box of health cookies that would serve for cereal (~0.90) and a loaf of sliced bread (~0.50).
In the end, the destination was reached with sufficient nutrition. The costs were unreasonable, but landing in a place is the journey from unreasonableness to reasonableness. Not to be forced, but to be determinedly advanced towards.
There's a sort of latitudinal line that you cross when travelling south, when the bus changes from noisy passengers with loud conversations and music and a dour crew, to noisy conversations and loud music from the bus crew, while the passengers grow quiet. I noticed this in Bosnia/Croatia as well -- and when the bus travels closely to politically contested ground, the music changes, the conversations seem to change in character. Defining their relationship to the place, perhaps.
From the plain governed by the country to the north, the contested region here is bordered by mountains, so I understand the almost mythic sense of gazing longfully at the mountains from the flatlands. On the other hand, even the cities governed by the northern country on the border seem mostly to be marked by minarets.
Several large fires visible along the route -- midsummer in the Balkans.
Absolutely exhausted. Walked around a bit, combining Google Maps with commonsense wandering to secure enough food for the next few meals, which is no mean feat in an ex-Yugoslav city on a Sunday night. Between a few convenience stores and a late-night fried-things bakery that sold bread as well, sufficient grub secured, at around half the cost of a couple meals sourced from a proper grocery.
Very strong contrast, not only with the average American city (which, in fairness would me much less walkable) but also with the more Western countries to the east and the north. It's basically the same logic as going to Wal-Mart all the time when I was working in outdoor dramas in Kentucky -- going to the distant places is much easier when you can handle support and supply issues quickly and efficiently. The German hypermarkets were my base in the country to the east -- even in the largest cities. When the means of securing necessities are clear and direct, the complexity can shift to where it's more profitable -- the thinking, the making, the reading, the exploring, etc.
The most important thing is to think clearly, and to adopt whatever practices and disciplines (or, occasionally, lapses in discipline) serve that end.
This statement, which is true, is true only because of the limitations in our notions of importance.
Part of the reason that I've been such an enthusiastic advocate of Girard's theories is that I can see virtually everyone around me living mimetically, because that was how they learned to live.
This way of thinking would have served me well (and did) as a professional maker of theatre, but the means of making theatre in my country have become industrialized, which is the opposite of organic. Organic is from organ, work, a form, like our internal organs, which also exists as a function, and gains its identity from that. The opposite, industry, if you could imagine the pieces of your body for a moment as industries, would be the forms of the organs working in order to serve the others, but without thinking of themselves as part of that larger thing. Each function of the body would think itself very useful, and sometimes essential, for the body, but it wouldn't think if itself as part of that thing that its function served, any more than a worker in a fast-food restaurant would think himself part of the community of people sitting around him and eating. In the second case, the form is from a purposiveness conceived ex ante, not function.
So when an art form becomes industrialized, the roles are preserved, but as jobs. And often those jobs are given according to corporate favor, or to those who more closely correspond to the secondary purposes of the industry. Rather than theatremaking, which would happen even absent any scheme for compensation. (Cf. Demothsenes: "I paid for the staging, while you merely danced in the chorus) rising up into a scheme for sustaining it, the form is created ex nihilio, purposively, by giving a fixed number of people jobs, along with some vague idea of what it was that legitimate theatre should do.
I well remember talking with a NY producer with who employed me for several years as a website editor, and the contempt he appeared to show when I said I would rather play the smallest role on a stage than produce the biggest show on Broadway.
The urge to make all things new runs deep among those of us driven to the hinterlands of things. The useful part of that is the increased incentive to look closely, and try with all the force of your being, to understand what's going on, and how it all hangs together.
To the hardware store to restock some of the kit. Always restock the central bits in the big cities. I've walked a mile and back with luggage on a layover once to visit this hardware chain, as it has the perfect bath brush for travel.
Being the type of person who would walk two miles for a decent bath brush is a a substantial and uncontroversial virtue, I hope. One doesn't always have to whistle Col. Bogey's March on the walk, but it does help.
It's very important to distinguish things said in a rational tone from rational words. this is how the politicians and imitators gain power and influence in organizations. Look at the mechanism of the thought in the words that they say. Does it function?
Notably, the majority of both professional philosophers working now would likely say that, in essence, there is no difference between the two. But I suspect that they've just exaggerated their notions of essence in order to disagree with the concept of essence. Much as people exaggerate their notions of God in order to create something in which it would be much easier not to believe.
If you ever need proof that humans as a whole can be used by inhuman forms, look no further than the industrialized cigarette.
The wise ones open the box, look inside, and then realize that this isn't the best way of using the thing that is wrapped up inside of it. Excellent way of limiting the pensionable years, in an actuarial sense. The vaping is perhaps worse. I carefully avoid those clouds and scents, particularly hereabouts. The ingredients that are advertised and sought out are bad enough, but essentially spraying an unknown industrialized chemical compound into your lungs is the worst idea you could have, short of injecting it directly into your bloodstream.
Calls to mind the LDS 19th c. prohibition on "hot drinks." Especially at that time, there was no telling what it was that was boiling in the percolator -- as Gurdjieff and others pointed out.
(And any point that Gurdjieff and Brigham Young were both making probably merited attention.)
To the museum of the old Republic, also the mausoleum of the President for Life. Fascinating place. Free admission on the first Thursday of the month. Then to the coffeehouse for a couple hours with Pynchon. Bridging the worlds. Two fundamentally different forms of consciousness. And two ineluctable aspects of cognition, developed within the age in the context of each polis.
Divided sky, the wind blows high. (Cf. the two points on the top of the "Non-aligned" monument near the river.)
The important bit, though, now that we're comfortably adrift in in the wasteland of things, is that each of these ways of thinking that dominated the politics of the last century -- whether rooted in the consciousness of present social situation, or aloft with the archetypes of the mind -- in addition to being a certain way of living, is also a way of seeing the world. Any society-wide way of thinking is deeply rooted in its epistemic motive. It's how the people of that time and place looked at the world and developed a vocabulary about it that enabled them to see the world.
The danger, now that we're past ideology and alignment, is that when we discard these ways of thinking, we're also, sub silento, discarding both the underlying epistemologies and the act of particularizing the things in the world. It is possible to live in the world and not notice the world. These politically polarized ways of thinking caused us to look more deeply into the world (I am sedulously avoiding the phrase "things that are the case") and have a more rich and salient experience of life itself. Life was meaningful for the revolutionary, not merely because it was good to do something to help the others, but also because they had to come to some understanding of the world in order to do that, and to come to that understanding, they had to investigate the world more closely, and think about it more carefully.
tl;dr: Freedom from history can also be freedom from experience.
Assuming I can get under sail and past the bar in the coming week (wrecks are always far more likely close to the port -- many's the slip..), I will have survived these rooms. Close traffic, noise, fumes, heat in the first part of it, ventilation too dirty to use. And yet a price roughly equal to much sounder quarters in the past, sometimes in this city. But it's the tourist season, and I had to book late. Oddly, the theatres are closed during the tourist/leisure season, so the coffeehouses had to bear the burden of the evening jaunts. Coffee much more reasonably priced on the western half of the peninsula. (Which is the Eastern half.) Henry James talks about the summer repertory of the Comedie Francaise in Tragic Muse -- deadly classics, staged for the tourists. But apparently, there's a tradition of festival season in this part of the world, and preparing for the fall, when the city will start up again as itself.
Found it impossible to read, think, write. I did manage to lengthen the morning runs, and solidify the practice after firming it up as a daily practice again in the last city -- after the disastrous winter in the country to the south.
"When the water is muddy, I wash my cloak. When the water runs clear, I wash my head covering."
In each engagement, conquer what you can.
Struck by the iconic hotel at the center of the city, a building I've walked past many times, probably every day when I was staying in the older half of the city. It's named for a distant capital, but it's of the place. Much like, perhaps, the Roman theatres were invariably places for stories about Greeks, and The Theatre in early modern London was a conscious appropriation of a Roman/Latin word. The perfection of the great, distant place, sometimes shifted in time as well -- at the center of the present place and time.
From my yeoman's knowledge of local history, there was apparently a time in which local sentiment looked very strongly towards the UK, and its pananthropos -- Shakespeare. But the F.O. couldn't come in on their side against the foes to the south without offending the great power to the east. Additionally, there's the ancient post-reformation shift in trade routes that caused much commerce with the Sublime Porte. Church-bells melted down into bullets, and sold to those suppressing the revolts in the Balkans. Metal has its own story. Much of the steel from the old 9th Ave. El was sold to Japan before the war, and was built into the battleships that the folks from the neighborhood went off to fight.
Motion and becoming. We're born into the middle of the adventure story, and quite likely won't see the credits roll. But do try to mark the changes, and know them.
Consider the principle of sufficient reason in the context of the development of technological infrastructure. Only a broad-based adoption of technology could focus a sufficient amount of resources on the central infrastructure. Perhaps, instead of seeing the end-gadget and the visual images on it, as an end in itself, the point of the whole thing -- also see it as a mechanism used to tap the resources of the end-user towards the creation of centralized infrastructure.
Went to the city's castle -- very ancient, has been held by a few empires over the last thousand years. Extraordinary views out over the plain, which are also visible at the (much smaller) citadel at the opposite end of the insular channel at the confluence of the two rivers. I try to make at least one visit there each time I visit here. I much prefer the castles in Transylvania, though -- there's something very discomfiting about seeing signs for lurid exhibitions of medieval torture devices, given the events of the last fifty years hereabouts -- at least in the northern castles, I'm absolutely confident that they haven't been used for warmaking or carceral purposes for a few centuries. One does get odd vibes. But I suppose I'm peculiarly sensitive. I still wonder a bit why people listen to orchestral requiems as art or entertainment.
Whatever the merits of nature and nurture, the directly proximate environment does shape the person. The traffic noise, the chaotic sidewalks, the scents of fried foods, the clouds of secondhand vapes.
Wealthier place aren't marked by these objective phenomena, and their residents seem to have a different general personality. Persistent correlation can indicate partial causation. Though having a lot of money can do other things to protect one's personality from the vicissitudes.
This is perhaps why, during the republic, they looked across the river and built apartments there. (Though curiously, they appear not to have extended the tram lines.) There is a famous local novel about the old architecture of the city, the protagonist, a romantic madman, looks in horror through is telescope at the characterless housing growing on the other side of the river. But there was green space, and planned development, and quiet. These things don't cost that much, except in the context of the band of detritus around urban areas, where square footage is costly, neighborhoods are ad hoc, etc.
One doesn't seek out sane housing for the sake of sane housing, as reasonable as that might sound. The housing shapes the mind, and the sensitive spirit. One turns into a bit of a troglodyte among the detritus, vaping, etc.
To their credit, they make it a point here to build sufficient housing for the population. I've seen this in several post-communist states. Whatever the many sins of the authoritarian state, it publicly preached a strong social ethic, and that ethic has persisted somewhat -- a very valuable residuum.
I can honestly say that I never encountered a law professor who appeared to care more for the object of their study than their own personal social standing. And I was looking rather closely.
That rule obtains in the academy generally -- the exceptions whom I've encountered have almost invariably been in philosophy or the arts.
To be clear, I studied the arts to practice the arts, then found things in the field to be a bit off-target, to use the mildest possible phrase. Then I studied law to practice law, and found the practice of law to be, with similar discretion, a bit corrupt. When, finally, I turned to the academy, it was largely animated by a sense that it was the source of the fact that ideas were no longer guiding things. It would have worked, but as it turns out, if you don't think that there is any truth to be found in the objects of study, there's apparently no need to preserve basic truth and honesty in the interpersonal world. At the end of it, I was basically trying to play baseball in the middle of a fistfight.
Onward. The old texts are still available, and they speak. There's also the possibility of making art at some point in the future, and if I ever find a path past the gates of the law, I'd be able to use those ideas to explain a few things.
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