Assembling, checking and compiling the gesamtwerk on Amazon and the Wordpress site. Making the mimesis monograph available in a few different formats, and reprinting the poetry book. Apparently the files I recompiled the monograph from were either older than the filenames indicated, or had become corrupted in the interval, so I did another proof, and will hold off listing it on the Wordpress site until Amazon has the final version up and running. Bit like the poet at the country house sending off a few envelopes to his London publishers before heading back to the front lines. The possible futility of it inspires a bit of perfectionism.
Fascinating talk at one of the UK Inns of Court on Milton yesterday. Viewership in the two-digit order of magnitude. There's an extraordinary amount of very worthwhile things on YT that no one knows about. Over dinner, I flit between the best chamber music in the world and very worthwhile talks with a handful of listeners. The trick is to not just subscribe to everything -- so you can see the scrolling feed -- but once you identify a certain worthwhile area, look for comparable channels. Every dinnertime, my feed is filled with evensong from UK cathedrals and Oxbridge chapels. Not going to swim the Tiber anytime soon, but the BCP liturgy is compelling.
One oddity on the Milton panel -- I think they did an entire evening on Milton's dramatic sensibility without mentioning Comus. Or I might have missed it -- multitasking, as usual.
Eavesdropping on an Oxbridge compline. The spirit itself requires an architecture, more than an immediacy. Not because the transcendent things are complicated, but because we are. We need to be raised to the condition of our own complexity to stand properly before the sacred. The dark in us illumined, the recalcitrant and sluggish will roused to attention.
This is the truth to much of Orthodox liturgy, I think. God doesn't need the repetitions, the grandeur, the awe-inspiring things. They exist to awaken us, to help us across our half of the bridge to the other place.
Things appear to be at a bit on an inflection point. At such times, it's always good to do what the television football and basketball broadcasts I remember from childhood used to call the "game reset." Basically a quick description of the story so far.
After about a decade of work in the theatre and a top conservatory degree, opportunities seemed to vanish for several years. So I went to a top-tier law school, and, perhaps because I was a few years ahead of most folks there, who had gone from undergraduate study to the J.D., I seemed to be a bit of a target for some faculty members. One in particular went very far over the line in my opinion, so I transferred to another top-tier school back in the city, got good grades, and took as many doctrinal and black-letter-law courses as they would allow (which almost no one does). Was largely shut out from the career paths, though. Perhaps coincidentally, it was a religious school, a faith different than mine (though not inconsistent with mine). A few difficult years followed; things got about as bad as they can get in the First World. Then I did a research doctorate, but after writing a 300 page dissertation and grading thousands of student papers, the faculty refused to schedule a defense. Perhaps coincidentally, during my time there, I had respectfully pushed back against a few practices that I firmly believed to be unethical. A few years of the same adversity followed.
This peregrination has been valuable. I've been able to fund it out-of-pocket, no credit cards, thanks to the relatively inexpensive cost of living, and the purpose of it -- the cultural exploration -- made the game worth the candle.
And yet, there's that story of mine that was unfolding in my own country, and that seems to have paused for a bit. This has been a time of work for me, not a vacation, but I'm conscious that it's the exception to the general difficulty that I've faced in my own country. These three careers that I've attempted (the first is still my life's work) collectively finding no traction can suggest odd things to the mind. I've firmly set my mind against thinking of anything like a vast conspiracy, but at the same time, I've come to realize that the generally held notions of what it is to live and work in my country couldn't account for these events. So there is no conspiracy, that's true. But, equally, the generally held notions do not describe what it is to live and work in this society. The present distorted national politics are not epiphenomenal.
I've been envious of the lives that I've observed in these travels. Even without a lot of disposable goods, people make generally better lives here. Coffee in the afternoons. In many countries, most people have second homes in the country. Bookstores in every neighborhood. I've kept an eye out for positions that I might apply for locally, while doing the global job search, but an American lawyer/academic/what you will is not exactly a logical staffing solution in most of these contexts.
I do rue one mistake. During the pandemic, I headed to the upper Midwest, a place that I like very much. I had just finished the PhD work, and my hopes were high that I could land a position either domestically or internationally. But in the interval, given the things I've described above, I've come to understand that even with my skills, degrees, and experience, the best that I can hope for in this culture is to find a place, read as much as I can, and write as much as I can, while finding a retail or basic position somewhere in the neighborhood. (And then part of the work will be in explaining why that is.)
There are role models for this kind of internal exile, and I think about them daily. My regret is that I didn't fashion such a place during the pandemic travels when I could have abandoned the job search and found a basic job deep in the rural Midwest, and set up the fortress of solitude. I am still convinced that if I can write and study, I will be able to accomplish some worthwhile work. And these studies are the sorts of things I would do even if I thought that everything I did was certain to vanish like words traced in water, as the romantic poet said.
So the wisest course seems to be to try to set something like this up, though it will be considerably more difficult now. And it looks like there will be some extraordinary difficulties in the near term.
Spiritually, this has been an extraordinary journey. The progressions of dreams in these places have been carefully noted. I will close this by relating something that I wasn't sure I would ever relate. At many points during these journeys, I have been conscious of a woman's presence, very near, and each time I am aware of her (there is of course no one around), she carefully asks if I am happy. Well. As I think about the question, I'm often tempted to reply somehow that no, reading philosophy while sipping a bit of kefir on the roof of the supermarket in Bosnia isn't precisely the dream, but I am happy in being able to continue the work, studying the philosophy, thinking about the theatre. But it took me some time to understand the point of the question. Happiness is not some condition that follows the work, or that occurs when the work is going well. Happiness comes from seeing the entirety of your life, as you do these mundane, particular things, and knowing that this living presence that studies, prays, observes, is a miraculous gift. When Thomas Merton saw those around him at a nondescript corner in Louisville (that I've walked past many times) seem almost divine, it wasn't because they were doing extraordinary things. Our prosperity has misled us as to the nature of happiness, I think.
Perhaps I should have told her that.
Perhaps I will.
###
Morning run down the mountain, into the town. Filled the ruck with provisions, and walked back up.
Thick grey fog over the valley on the way in. Had the sense of walking from the clear and open place into the foggy confusion. When you spend a week or so away from the towns, walking into the street plan does bring a cloud on the mind. You can almost feel the energies of the place. Harmless town, quite nice in places. Suspect it would be the same anywhere. On the return, the mist was general.
Mountain in view on the return, solid pack of snow now established at the top. Summit appears to be right at the treeline, but in this part of the world, it's hard to tell. The mountains in southern Bosnia and Montenegro (several evil names) appear to be mostly without vegetation for most of the peak. There are summit routes to the one here, but without a vehicle, it looks like it would require a starting time well before dawn.
Surprised to find some of the characters in Against the Day in the same coordinates I've been through of late. Decided to pick it up out of the generic ereader folder, and put it back on the top, so I can finish. The earlier time or two I made the pugnacious slog through, I hadn't yet set my foot on these mountains. Started this read in the cafes of Belgrade a few months back (I think after visiting the House of Flowers, which is now the House of Small Pebbles) but there have been many literary detours and frolics in the interval.
Fascinating piece on homelessness by William Vollman in the Vatican newspaper yesterday.
Not linking it, though, since I had the same reaction to it as I did to the original papal document. The reactions of (even excellent) clerics and picaresque novelists don't always describe the thing itself very clearly. The graphic nature of the article is shocking, yes, but the shocking nature of it also has the unfortunate effect of supplying a certain social logic, in that it is the shocking people who have no homes. The truth of it is that you can be the most clean-cut, clear-thinking one in the room, sometimes even the strongest in the room at whatever the task is, and if you offend the wrong groups of people (remember Madison: the danger of faction), you will possibly be due for extreme misfortune. Granted, when the home is lost, almost everyone falls apart after a few days, and then the picaresque novels and the socially conscious colportage has a foothold. But the implication that all of its victims lose the plot once their plot of land is taken away is dangerous. There are clear-eyed, very intelligent, and puritanically clean-living folks at Mass every morning and pacing the streets in the evening. When he visited the big city, Christ often slept on the side of the Mount of Olives.
A democracy, or really any state, relies on the public understanding of its present nature. Part of the present problem might be that those with sufficient wealth and property, thanks to the media, can have an understanding of the present politics that's a bit attenuated from reality, both conceptually and also as to what it means to actually live there, in a place not insulated from the contact with the full spectrum of people in the society.
Most critically: do not assume that this is a meritocracy, or that there is a workable social logic determining who is wealthy and who is fighting to survive. Knowing that (1) you are good and (2) that you are momentarily safe from want is not sufficient proof of the health of the republic.
Becoming convinced that the political problem in my country is the absence of a credible opposition. Reminds me of the comedy bit about Dukakis against Bush. Bush rambles on incoherently for a bit, and then 'Dukakis,' asked for a rebuttal, turns to the camera and speaks his whole reply: "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."
A rodeo clown distracts the dangerous forces of nature while the workers go about their business.
But like Hickey in Iceman Cometh, I have withdrawn to the grandstand of philosophical self-detachment, to fall asleep watching the cannibals do their death-dance.
If there were to be a project to save the humanities, philosophy, history, etc. from the slough of trite-minded despond into which it has lucratively wandered (to make all things new is the primary, and always necessarily frustrated ambition of the thinker -- but the present moment is slightly different than the usual), it might look to make available the most important books in each field from eighty years ago. After that point, the humanities decided to imitate the technological sciences, and see every bit of a knowledge as material progress to a more perfect machine. In fact, from Socrates to the present, every teacher has tried to teach the same things, and when it has gone well, the words were meaningful.
Germany in the second half of the 19th c. did something very remarkable with philosophy, history, the study of literature, etc. I can't imagine the present mechanism ever managing to accomplish half as much in its time.
Hebdomadal walk down into the town for the week's supplies. Mountain ranges idyllic with the changing leaves, warm breeze from the south blowing some extraordinarily fresh air from the mountains. Unlike last week, the principal peak silhouetted by very faint sky glow on the return, as I walked back along the axis of the Milky Way.
I cannot overstate the importance of having a good ruck, whatever your situation. It's the sort of consumer good that's replicated by the million, but if you know what to look for, you can find a good one at about the same price as most, and much less inexpensive than those constructed in such a manner as to provide good advertising copy. That, and the wide-brimmed felt hat, the sign of the artist since the mid 19th c. The Dauphin had his horse, I have a ruck and hat.
Given the advances in manufacturing, there is an abundance of goods in the world; the ultra-high-end in my experience is generally much overrated. So you have to be selective, but not in the manner of the fashionable. Once you identify a certain good that would be useful (ruck, hat, boots, etc.), honestly investigate the thing itself, find out what makes it good, and look for that sort of thing. (Finding out what was the best 75 years ago can provide some pointers.) No need to keep consulting the magazines to find the good things. As Gurdjieff pointed out, that usually leaves you at the mercy of whoever has a large marketing budget at the time.
The difficulty with late afternoon/evening workouts is that the body tends to think that the fight is o'er , the battle won, despite the clear understanding of the mind that there is nothing keeping me from sitting down to another hour or two of work of the day that I stopped in order to go to the gym, instead of starting in on a second project more appropriate to the preprandial hour (reading, dinner prep, etc.).
By far, the most salient point about the political reality in my country is that this isn't an exception, or atypical, like a normal, liberal Western democracy where, for a season, professional wrestling on television becomes popular for some reason. From the mechanism that has swung into place behind the administration, it should be evident that this isn't a superficial change in government. (Having noticed a few things about his early backers, I'm not surprised by this.)
But this doesn't mean that all good citizens should rush to the barricades. In fact, the polarizing political hyperbole and mobilization from the opposition basically ensured the election of the present executive. Just note where things ring false, and remember them as specifically as you can, and use the falsity that you observe as the basis of your political discourse. If you were debating a madman, you wouldn't conduct the debate as if he were sane and impute the rational form of his ideas to his side, and you wouldn't start frothing at the mouth yourself. Just indicate the falsity.
And it's not just the political sphere. Having been a professional actor for a decade (as a matter of principle, I count the last three years, in which for some reason I couldn't even book a non-paying job), I went to a top law school and earned good grades, and I spent four years on a research doctorate, and I came to know the prevailing culture in these places very well. The country is the test of a certain principle -- whether a prosperous middle class (by recent sociological books, a proportion much higher than any in the past) can stabilize and govern itself democratically. At this point, we can only hope that a time-traveller somehow reaches Philadelphia at the founding to describe the world of televised politics. But absent that, perhaps we should make the necessary adjustments.
-------------------------------------
The disclaimer of self-interest, of course. But the fact that quiet people who basically keep to themselves and read a lot, even with strong degrees from good schools, sometimes find it virtually impossible to secure the basic necessities of life because they haven't formed a sufficient number of corrupt connections among the great and the good is one of the chief signs that I'm pointing to. Ask anyone who has attended a good school recently about the scholarship there, and they'll likely talk instead about how important it was to make acquaintances, whatever the intellectual cost. This is one sign that the civilization has turned against the culture.
A certain type of civilization begins to form. I recognize it, because I've been travelling through several civilizations of that type over much of the past few years. But the good people in these places who are trying to make their own world a better place look to distant models for inspiration, and they used to look to my country for that.
Seek, strive, find, don't yield, &c.
Feast of St. JP2 -- rather good fellow. Caught the encore at the very end of the Chopin competition last night, after listening to much of the last round or two. And the feast of John Cantinus a few days ago. Polonia resurgens.
When I was at the (very new) altar of Czestochawa in St. Pat's before the present peregrination, I thought about going to Poland, and using the churches there for meditation and prayer, but the budget indicated a more southerly course. Not at all a complaint, the spiritual riches of Bosnia and Serbia are very worth encountering. And yet...
Another late night on soul-stilling tasks that flew in through the transom after the fires were covered. And so, another late morning. The sins of yesterday will put the following mornings on edge.
Thinking about that scene in The Matrix (a true film), just before the protagonist signs on to his task. The Fellow opens the limousine door and shows him the life on street level. From memory of seeing it many years ago, every device of the cinematographer is enlisted to make it seem as if the story of the people in the limousine is the only possible story. Similar moments in other films. Not everyone has the decision-point of serving one of several powerful folks in the CIA, or dying on the street, but I think the right choice was made. Frankly, I prefer the Whitehall memoir version of the event, where the young, hapless fellow is back at the college in time for dinner, and then depending on the answer, enjoys a life of intrigue or prosperity in the City. But perhaps the set of published memoirs is not reflective of the whole.
See through the devices of the cinematographers. Help the fly out of the bottle, as W said. The consolations of philosophy displace other, more insidious consolations.
Fascinating heist at the Louvre. Saw one news report saying five guards were held at bay with an angle grinder while the crown jewels were made off with.
Puzzlingly low valuation. Perhaps someone was trying to save on the insurance. Crown jewels have no value. If you get the crown jewels, values change.
In most notions of royal monarchy (there are other kinds), the rule passes with the crown as devised by the previous monarch, though the interplay with public and private law makes for a multiplicity of state mechanisms.
And I'm still wondering what Albert thought he was doing with the Kohi-Noor. Lost half the rock.
In the same manner, when the thought comes to read a certain book or watch a certain film, first consider the aspect of actual experience that this mirror might be pointing towards. It's quite likely that this is what the mind is trying to tell you, as it's likely why you found the book or film to be worthwhile.
Somewhat pining for a book-lined study in D----- or some similar part of town. Pining is generally bad, but it can indicate the useful action for the day. If I were to be in such a place, I would read Kant, so I read Kant, regardless of the actual circumstances. This is one reason why we need to be careful of eavesdropping djinns who would want to do us well -- these almost-wishes that some thing were to be the case are not desires for the thing itself ("Stay, thou art so fair..."), but indications of situations in which we can do what it is that we're trying to do. So, get about doing it.
"...to whet thy almost blunted purpose."
Methinks the ghost was being polite. That purpose was rusted solid, caked with mud, and leaving a trace in the grass of the yard where it had been tossed for a season.
Unrelatedly, have been lifting recently instead of running. Brings some obtuseness to the mind, particularly on a traveller's diet. (Remembering the post-lifting, post-sauna peanut butter, chocolate, banana, and coffee protein shake at Gold's in the city. Tended to hit the spot.)
One of the curious moments of theatregoing in the last year was the Hamlet at the Hungarian theatre in Cluj. I saw it the night before I left on my second visit, and then coincidentally, it was scheduled for the night of my arrival for the third visit, and while I was there, appeared on the calendar for the night before I left. Only one of the unheimlich things in those visits. (Deo gratias.)
It was the old standard Hungarian adaptation with the peculiar mystic poem at the end.
[Correction, I have now checked the standard 19th c. Hungarian adaptation, and there is no mystic poem there. Apparently interpolated in the only production I've seen. Perils of actual theatregoing.]
But the uncanny thing about it was that the projected supertitles didn't use the original English text, but one of the "plain language" adaptations. As a result, the only place the actual text was happening was inside my mind, as I watched these other layers unfold.
What to do when the unheimlich is your homeland. And the only place the truth of the text seems to be is within the echoing mind.
If I didn't consider it a mark of civilization and culture to work with a care and decorum independent of actual circumstances, the events of recent years would have created a very different person.
I think this is ultimately the right view. We inflect and direct the time from a moral center apart from circumstance. We are not creatures of the event. We create the event.
(cf. Heidegger on that last bit, of course.)
The parallel mechanisms of government that have appeared in this administration are revealing -- diplomacy run from the Upper East Side rather than Foggy Bottom, etc. This administration is fundamentally corporatist, so it sets aside the instruments of the republic, and lets the consultants run the show. And, in part, this is useful. This moment is the ascendancy of the Machiavel, and the decrease of the Republic, and this is a necessary circle. Pisistratus diminishes the Areopagus. The individual within society has to be defined from time to time, else it grows indistinct within the republic.
But that circle of meaning can also be made discontinuous in the process of widening it. And, separately, we shouldn't be surprised if the profits of the present moment ultimately don't accrue to the republic.
And the decline of the republic isn't an idle matter. It is the survival of both the state and those within the state. People are dying on the streets of the prosperous nation, and more citizens will likely die on the streets in the times to come.
Perhaps: The prosperity from the postwar mechanisms of industrial development in the West are essentially idiot-proof -- their greatest-generation architects knew their own children rather well. But as a result the basic character of society is no longer attuned to the production for the common good. Although sustained by the baseline prosperity of the industrial mechanisms, its sense of phenomenological and social reality largely comes from mediated forms, such as television.
So the pillars of society are strong, but the fabric is weak. The mechanisms of this industrial prosperity can be populated with some fraction of the population, and there's no need to make it a meritocratic selection. Those not incorporated into the mechanism are simply surplus, in the society's view.
The fundamental reversal that must happen to avert the emergent technological-industrial dystopia is perhaps that we need to shift from thinking of the shared life as the population of set industrial forms to the more basic awareness that the social perspective necessarily implies the totality. The proper question: What are all of us going to do now? And with the robustness of the industrial forms, that question can be answered as boldly as possible. Otherwise, I doubt that humanity will be the most salient aspect of the coming world.
Perhaps.
Tried, as a matter of duty, to slog through Sorokin's Blue Lard, and had some worthwhile musings on the first bits, but by the time of the infamous Stalin/Khrushchev scene (though K seems to stand for a more ominous international cosmopolitanism, not the fellow himself) I had to put it aside. He's doing interesting things, but it's a bit like the last play I saw at the war theatre in the country to the west -- the way of doing things might be shocking to the locals, but it's simply alienating and confusing to the more objective observers, who are simply trying to follow the message of the artist. Became impossible to understand what he was trying to do, specifically, with these seriously disgusting somatic devices. And reading obscenity qua obscenity is not my cup of tea.
Perhaps my view on domestic politics is a bit like Ovid's perspective on the city, as he looked out (the other direction) over the Black Sea. Distance does give some perspective. Reading the domestic newspapers, it's virtually impossible to determine where the news section ends and the entertainment section begins. (One of my conservatory mentors, a Czech scenographer, had a standard talking point on the relegation of the arts section to the middle of the entertainment section.) Events on scripted television series are considered news. That's simply flabbergasting, and probably why a reality TV star is running the show.
Considering the American mind, the most dangerous thing is that the entire sequence of thought, political and otherwise, now seems off-kilter. It begins in this matrix of news and entertainment and lattes, and while it used to reach back into the fabric of existing things, the exercise of thought now moves away from the fabric of things. Deliberate thought used to have a recuperative effect on the mind and the discourse.
And this isn't just about political discussions and thinking. Matters large and small miss the mark, but the frozen hamburgers roll into the small town every week nonetheless.
I think if I were to land back there now, I would be a bit like Sam Beckett, watching them silently, waiting for them to land in reality, to find the way things are, like they used to be able to do, if only for a moment.
Quasi-sequi-hebdomal walk down into the town for provisions. Filled the ruck with groceries from the German chain, and walked back to the the mountains in the cloudy darkness. Even invisible, save for the scattered point of light from a solar cell or chair-lift track, quite the silent presence. Can sense them from the direction and character of the wind, almost.
Still in wonky schedule world. Rolling with it.
As it turns out, the cheapest coffee in the store can be genuinely bad. Roasted within an inch of its life, and only the faint scent of twig underneath. Was worth a try. Water would be preferred to it.
There are two kinds of cheap coffee -- a lighter roast of a cheaper bean (often Robusta), or the dregs roasted to indistinguishability. The latter in this case. Saw a company name in the UK, but in retrospect, looking to UK import/export for good coffee in the Balkans is like choosing Philadelphia soap based on a trust in the metropolis. (At the founding, a famously bad soap precisely because of the non-rural fabrication process.)
In the Balkans generally, the Montenegrin bean is the best, but the Bosnian roast is the finest processing. Romania makes a decent cup in the Western style, and Hungary has the trade lines, so you can get the really good stuff from the Mideast in the small shops for not that much more.
Essentially lost the day to that schedule change that came out of nowhere and extended into the early morning. Fardels.
Must return to being more robust about those sorts of things. There's a bellum omnium contra omnes on.
A bit like finding a hotel in the mountain away from the front line and forgetting to keep your mind on the larger picture. Restful, at first, but there are trenchant engagements elsewhere, and one might have to go over the top someday.
For all the talk about the southern Balkans (which, strictly speaking are the central Balkans, geographically), the people lead very comfort-filled, if not comfortable, lives without the stream of disposable goods. Long coffees in idyllic courtyards outside the apartment. In some countries, second homes in the country are the norm. I've enjoyed these villages qua capital cities, but hopefully, the intensity hasn't vanished, as the village mentality doesn't always fare well when thrust into the larger fight. As in a short story of the Greek-Catholic Romanian priest whose statue I found in the neighborhood, and whose works I later tracked down in the research library, in times of war, they simply vanish from the villages at a more or less constant rate.
I do envy all of the housing that they build here (think the opening credits to 'Irony of Fate'). They see it as a social obligation to build sufficient housing for the community. Massive Brutalist concrete structures in which one could keep immense libraries of paperbacks -- Hegel, Solzhenitsyn, Kant -- from the ubiquitous bookshops. (Americans, statistically speaking, read less than one book per person per year; the numbers are much different here. My kind of folks.)
Lo these many years ago, I set out to work as an actor. It was my understanding that this would involve a short time of extraordinary difficulty. Then, after a decade or so, I studied law, and it was clearly set out that law school would be a short time of extraordinary difficulty. Then, after a short spell as an utterly briefless non-barrister, I set out to write a research doctorate, and it was clear that this would involve a short time of extraordinary difficulty.
Clearly, life in its essence, or at least my life, which is all I shall ever know of life in its essence, is a short period of extraordinary difficulty. And I don't know that it's wise to quarrel with either of those particulars too much.
And yet... From looking about, it would seem that these difficulties would be a bit more productive if they were like the difficulties encountered by others who dared less in these prosperous societies. The paradox: dare greatly, and you might very well have no place to stand. Dare less, and you'll be allowed to harmlessly linger.
Peculiar moment in an international public law conference that I eavesdropped on last week. An interesting talk, another international/regional tribunal might be coming into force, and the speaker was setting forth the case for it. I sent in a question on a certain historical precedent that would seem to have to be made explicit in the tribunal's assertion of authority. The moderators ended up posing the question, and the speaker gave a very thoughtful and surprisingly categorical response. The moderator seemed troubled by the answer (or perhaps the question), though, and then launched into a long, involved question about how much historical precedent had to do with legitimacy, and if covenant among the actors of the time might equally provide legitimacy. Watching this, I understood that he was attempting to dispel the hold of history, and this is a bit troubling.
It's consistent with the Weberian project of modernity, yes, but in the great European debate between historicist legal legitimacy and enlightened legal codes imposed by fiat, recent history offers considerable evidence against the latter. Watching it, it seemed qualitatively identical to the conscious positioning that I saw going on in law school days among the professors who were aligning behind the debate over Romer, etc. They wanted something, and thought they could achieve it politically, and they simply didn't want history to be thought about.
In a perfectly constructed world, this would be troubling enough. But I've encountered more than a few corrupt gatekeepers to these corridors of power, and if simple political will is enough to trump history, then the corrupt mechanism will rule without those on the outside of things being accorded any legitimacy other than whatever present political force they might bring to bear.
---
Incidentally, I studiously avoided using the verb "trump" during law studies, and once mused aloud about doing that during a constitutional law 'cold call.' It just seemed too easy a word to use, when a more full explicitation was possible.
Interesting times in the homeland. I continue to think that the most egregious and jaw-dropping things going on might be contrived to be so in order to distract from the things going on deeper in the mechanism. When a mechanism shifts polarity, it changes throughout, so I have to assume that changes are going on at the enter of things while these egregious things are going on on the outside. And the people around this instantiation of the government are very tech-savvy people, connected to some of the companies powering the movement towards digital governance. (I noticed yesterday that half of the layoffs in one government agency were rolled back due to a "coding error," which would seem to indicate not merely a digitized process, but the fact that commands are arriving from on high, without too many cooks in the kitchen.)
Fundamentally: the present political moment is phenomenologically identical to a movie -- it arrives on entertainment devices, and is as scripted as 'reality television' was. But the mechanism of the medium isn't anodyne with respect to the audience member.
Tweaked the website design. (This blogger site is only a sub-site of the larger site, which you can get to by clicking on the link at the top.) Looks much better now. Branding shifting to the wordpress url, as it's more durable in a crisis, should a crisis arise.
Mulling not renewing the annual payment to keep it ad-free. Everyone I know uses ad blockers, and I suspect that for the rest, it will just look like all the other websites.
Had a moment recently in which it appeared as if one of the big chutes in the great game of chutes and ladders was soon to open up under my feet. I learned a lot from my reaction to that. You have to have equanimity, whatever the danger or the event. I understood that truth very clearly two or three years ago, but it appears that the equanimity might have slipped a little in the interval. The uses of adversity are sweet, but it takes a conscious effort to make them part of your life. Working on it.
From cultural reasons, there is a prevailing sense that a life is not properly lived unless you enter into the melodrama of it, and really feel the event. As someone with a conservatory master's degree in acting who has played 19th c. melodrama professionally in the city (the play subsequently became popular, but not due to our production), I can vouch for the fact that this intuitive approach to life bears little resemblance to the experience of actual melodrama, and likely comes from a completely different source. Actual melodrama requires an absolute clarity, not the muddle of fears that make up most of modern experience.
You must maintain equanimity with respect to these chutes and ladders. It's possible that, in the fullness of time, both the chutes and the ladders will get very strange indeed. Determination, regardless of the event.
Two quick cultural references. First, C.P. Snow's dictum that there are two types of people in a crisis, those whose faces go pale, and those whose faces go red with passion, and it's better to have the first type in charge. Second, the anecdote (perhaps in Chambers Book of Days, perhaps elsewhere) about the first sighting of the Spanish Armada. News was rushed to the waiting forces, but Raleigh (I think) was engaged in a game of lawn bowling. The breathless messenger arrived with the news. Raleigh's (?) response, essentially: "We'll finish this game first." And they did.
This "ephemera" subsite continues to be completely invisible to the search engines -- the usual fixes (sitemaps, manual robots.txt, etc.) seem ineffectual. No indexed pages in Google, all sitemaps inaccessible to the search engines. Perhaps due to the present focus of the search engines -- blog content generated by hand used to be the gold standard for search, but it wouldn't be much use for the uses that search engines are put to these days.
I don't think I've ever had a computer that worked exactly as it was supposed to all the time. We blunder onward through the forest, bread cast on the water, breadcrumbs cast on the darkening path.
You can't trust appearances. (Even though that's all we have.) The church used to teach people that, but now that teaching has fallen away. Philosophy used to teach people that, but that art has now been safely insulated from general experience. People now have the altogether unjustified sense that appearances can be trusted, perhaps because they've been scientifically verified, perhaps because the reality of television is entirely based on appearances. It is necessary to take off the VR glasses, as it were, though it's perfectly possible to die with them on. Enlightenment, though not a function of our own will, similarly isn't an inevitable part of life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)