Almost invariably, just at the moment when it seems that all is lost, and there's very little hope of anything good happening in the near future, you realize that this is in fact the case. Because that's how intellectual intuition generally works.
Thinking of stopping in a the Bucharest Opera House for a $4 seat in the back of the balcony this evening, closing my eyes, and listening to the dark, Dvorak timbres of the strings in the overture. Highly unlikely, of course, as I'm on the other side of the planet at the moment, but the thought does bring some cheer.
Normally, I would, of course be pining for Balkan and Transylvanian cities of recent trips, but I'm sufficiently cognizant of the mind-independent world to note that they had very little use for me there. (The trireme nomad work flew in through the transom from another country entirely.) In the main, I just observed the work that they made, and set down some remarkably inconsequential writings on the subject. Quite enjoyable, though. And miles better than the abyss of present days.
"Don't pine. It kills."
Most basically, I was able to exist -- to think, to read, and (despite all) to write a bit. The present existence (revealing word: one has existence only when not doing anything) almost seems designed to make thought and writing impossible. Making the most of the specific advantages of the situation, a bit like Pac-man getting the "research library" "cheap gym" "cheap non-meat protein" dots or cherries, despite the fact that, big picture, the ghosts are clearly winning the board.
If you send an army into a country, capture the head of state, and claim that you will govern the country, you have stated the claim that you have conquered that country.
But this isn't apparent to the corporatist viewpoint -- an utterly new (pace the East India Company, Russia Company, etc..) form of statecraft, with its own vocabulary and therefore its own logic. The difficulty is, and it's really one of the first things you learn when dealing with other countries, that the people of different countries speak different languages.
Interesting that the French were so quick with the demarche (television news version). The ancient first throne of Europe resurgent? #notexpert
At some point, I will write the history of these days. I don't discuss the specifics of circumstances in these ephemeral jots for many reasons, including lack of context, and discretion as to matters of personal safety. But when I do write it, I must remember that this time wasn't maudlin, or fraught, or emotional. There were simply a few things that had to be gotten through, and also a few things that might be useful if they were done at the time. The difficulty was only in the difficulty of doing specific things, and didn't really have a metaphysical cast to it. Part of this might be the discipline in my approach -- teetotal, of course, never asking for a handout or doing things a 19th c. member of parliament in similar straights wouldn't do. (For example, if there's a night without a place to be gotten through, one sits up straight on a parkbench rather than stretching out on the sidewalk. Decorum has a modal aspect.)
Today:a bit unsteady, likely ultimately due to the physical realities, so some background reading for the project, and trying to drum up a bit more trireme business through the transom.
At one point, one of the biographies of Peirce said something along the lines of 'being completely clueless about the social forces aligned against him in the academy, he invested some time in seeking an academic position.' Wry smile. But the shift of the last six months or so is the realization that I will have to be prepared to make the work outside the walls, extra muros. Navalny must have realized that he would need to put everything in his journals, as his autobiography, written after his fortunes reversed and he held office for some years, might prove... speculative.
Solzhenitsyn's First Circle (the TV version, which he narrates, is also worthwhile) was just outside the capital, as I recall. Surrounded by comfort and idleness, a life, or a small number of lives, of rather extraordinary difficulty. Find the strangeness in that, or you'll be wallowing in the maudlin.
Anything done in this culture must be against the grain. There is immense industrial prosperity, with which the people presently in charge have absolutely nothing to do -- a legacy of the post-WW2 industrial structures. At present, the game is that one goes along with the crooked game as a crooked game, or one dies in the street. (Unless cushioned by sufficient wealth to avoid dealing with these sorts of encounters.)
At the second setback, the peculiar goings-on at the JD, I was surprised that my pointing out the specific problems was taken as a general criticism of the system, a sort of d --- all, make all things new, etc. In retrospect, I should probably have thought closely about that reaction. It did, in a manner, indicate the nature of things.
In the widest possible view: making the citizenry accountable for the direction of the civilization & culture puts the minds and consciences of the citizenry in play, in a way fundamentally different than in previous, more primitive (or perhaps primordial) systems.
Importantly, this deliberate corruption isn't a delict to those who are doing it -- they generally seem to think that we should evolve past such compunctions, and I'm more than a bit concerned that we might.
On a completely separate note, it appears that 20 F with a wind chill in the single digits is apparently the low bound for restful sleep in the open. A moveable marker -- when things had just begun to go bad, I couldn't sleep a wink without 40F and sunlight.
The Metrocard is no longer. It had just launched when I moved to the city to make theatre after the conservatory master's degree. I actually did a short presentation on the fare structure of the new card in our "business of the business" class in the ground floor studio theatre in the old stone academic building (originally, the YMCA house) in Cleveland. All the same, the icon of the city that I kept on the air conditioner in the work room in my apartment to get through the Cleveland winter was a pair of the traditional tokens, which still worked at the time.
Then, when I moved to the city, I would check my answering service daily from a street payphone.
The present-day conservatory student would likely find a few things about that sentence puzzling.
A quiet new year's -- which is generally my preference. Perhaps my favorite memory if the eve is listening to the radio in my UWS apartment with some aquavit and the window open to listen for the distant explosions. Or in the apartment overlooking Cluj, Romania, watching the immense display over the city severally launched from each neighborhood or backyard, with the immense Hungarian church lit at the base of the hill.
Was going to walk through the park, but there was fencing, and closed off areas. And the traditionally free concert at the immense Episcopal cathedral north of the park is apparently no longer free. So I bought a pocketful of discounted Christmas chocs, and walked down along the river and out onto the piers. Passed 42nd Street just at midnight, and saw the fireworks in the distance "(it's a surprisingly wide island). Interestingly, just after midnight, it appears there's a custom for all manner of large boats, but especially harbor cruise boats, to circle the island, against the clock. Counted at least a dozen from the piers in Chelsea, before the parade stopped in front of the large sports complex so a few boats could blast out the "macarena." Then down into the WV, with the partying NYU kids and FiDi workers -- their cast of mind is utterly alien to me. It's bit like a party in the hills at my undergrad, making my way through all of the stoned folks with a humble Milwaukees Best in my hand. Children of the new world. Lo, the poor Indian.
The present equivalent of Nietzsche's horse might be watching some young Muslim guy in a Santa getup pedaling a cab brightly lit for Instagram and blasting a Christmas carol, madly circling the lane at the stoplight, so the customer doesn't stop the $10/minute meter, as I watch from the marihuana-scented curb.
The deal seems to be that so long as industrial prosperity makes it possible to pretend that things are as they appear to be, it's a fatal solecism to think or speak otherwise. This is the vibe of both the WV crowd and the greedy midtown tourists.
As for me, I will continue to understand how things are, and how they hang together. Even if it means waking up on a parkbench in a blizzard from time to time. The way is steep, but the mountain is real. (Pining a bit for the Bulgarian mountain stay of a month or so ago.)
Given under my hand, on the turning of the year of our Lord 2026, and of the Republic, the 250th.
Walking through Hell's Kitchen, I caught the word "spatchcock" from a passing conversation. And checking my YT feed, I see Phish is playing the Garden tonight. There is a logic to things.
fwiw, I think the usage comes from the UWS chicken rotisserie places that were a bit more plentiful on the UWS in the early aughts. Distinctly remember the signs.
A month and a fortnight, while winter arrived in the northern city. Not an easy slog, but buoyed along by graces visible and in, it has been possible. Of course, winter has a duration as well as an arrival, but sufficient is, and ever shall be, the day.
Non-project reading shifting to neo-Kantian ways -- I took out Cassirer's Kant book to tide me over when the libraries closed over Christmas, and now working through some of his other stuff. The project work continues apace.
When you find yourself outside the charm of a certain society, for some reason, the intuitive response is to lessen the powers of observation and propensity for contact; as you're no longer serving the purposes of these social forms, the logic that kept you engaged with those social forms now dictates that you slacken your energies so as not to interfere with things. But there are other sources of energy. In addition to the various brands of instant coffee dissolved in the water bottle. (The Indian uses his plants, the wartime German his chemical factories, and I use my everyday consumer goods. The point is to wisely use the things around you.)
In grad school, I picked up a useful phrase from a musician travelling through the theatre where I was training: "Take it easy, but take it."
After a few days of intense trial, when the weather warms and the mist rises from the ground, the animal nature relaxes into the small springtime, but the human spirit, perceiving this, correctly redoubles his discipline.
Take it easy, but take it.
When you get through a few things generally thought to be impossible, the world, of necessity, changes. The world, and by deduction, my experience, couldn't have been what it had been thought to be.
--
I'm not sure what prompts my unconscious to bring specific locations back to my mind from time to time, but it's amiably unheimlich to find oneself at Mass in the back of St. Pat's when the ikonostasis of an old orthodox church in Belgrade or an old Baroque SJ church in Transylvania comes to mind.
"...and rays of light you cannot see / Are flashing through eternity." (Poe)
Difficult evening. Ante faciam frigorum eius, quis sustainabit?
Perhaps related -- although the usual dawn workout went fine, when I returned to the books, higher thought proved elusive. Like a fog staring into a cloud. αρτον εχουσιον not on the menu. Will have to redouble the scholarly focus, now that I seem to have the ability to survive some of the the other things, by the grace of something or other.
Which poses a unique difficulty, as it's not a quality that folks usually possess or work to possess, and there's nothing in my present social role that would indicate that I'm capable of it, or should be wasting my time with it. I alone understand the necessity of it. I would do nothing else, if I could.
Even the most brutal authoritarian governments provide a place of internal exile for the dissident and the dissentient. The market-based society simply closes the door and waits for them to vanish from the threshold, one way or another.
Given present difficulties, frequently, a specific place from the travels will come to mind. Different countries at different hours of the day. This creates some difficulty, as I have no claim on these places, no right or adventitious chance that would land me on those shores. Before, I thought of them as unapproachable distant nations -- now, the place summons itself to mind as the idea of an impossible home.
Bit on the upswing after the solemnity. Mulling the possibility that it was the stage dimming before the Grail descended -- after all, the background context of this holiday is winter night. John of the Cross -- the armies... descended.
--
One does make acquaintance with the shadows of life during those times, in addition to the difficulties of the present, and I'm coming to realize that there were a few things askew with the early life. Every unhappy family has a right to be unhappy in its own way, but when two or three secrets, both the official kind and the family-bible type, cause a house that unhappy, I do have to fault the folks who insisted that the secrets be kept. The cause of much unhappiness, and a few broken things, and now, when the secrets wouldn't matter too much -- neither help nor hurt -- it seems clear that the cost of keeping them and riding out the storm was unconscionably high. Particularly for the ones clueless at the time.
Shadows of the past. Only visible in the light of the present. Onward.
Extraordinary difficulties over last day or so. Went from having a difficult fight in hand to utter exhaustion and incapacity yesterday AM. Slogged t through, not exactly covered in glory. Debated missing the midnight mass, but walked over in plenty of time for the standby line.
Midtown packed with materialistic tourists. Goods from afar -- Nicholas of Bari (translated).
A feast scheduled adventitiously, for the darkest days, but no less authentic for that. After two thousand years, the saving force in the spirit is already named Christmastime. It is already part of what we think with.
In the depth of darkest night, A birth. And from that hour, his death was inevitable. And so a good birth.
This is a very difficult way. I must remember that. From traversing it before, I remembered the inexpensive, healthy, protein-rich food and access to a world-class research library, but the experience has other dimensions.
The "quarantine planet" episode of the new Who comes to mind.
Although I should be more circumspect, as I've not yet quite lived up to the circumstance. Still a bit like a fellow punched randomly in a civilized place, or who wandered accidentally down a difficult side street. Strong, but befuddled, and very much not of the place. It is possible to rise to the circumstance, become a monk/ninja/knight/whatever of the place, and survive that way. But this is a function of time.
Absolute discipline and teetotal, of course, but still a bit of Touchstone in the forest. Corin's shearling coat might become necessary. A function of time, conditioned by identity.
It honestly seems that any time not spent reading or thinking about philosophy is wasted. (It seems to have taken the place, over the last year or two, of necessity, of the arts on the other side of the locked door.) Nonetheless, a few hours on the legal history project today. Someone on a boat who had no idea where he needed to go could get away with wasting absolutely not one bit of force of the wind.
Odd fatigue when sitting down to work after fighting through swarms of tourists for a few hours beforehand. Correlation? Causation? Calumny?
When Strange and Difficult Times began, almost fifteen years ago, my primary focus was on finding that one jungle vine to swing out to safety on -- so I focused my energies on finding a job in my degree fields. After a long bot of that, I split my focus between the survival of the difficult spots in which I found myself and preserving the mechnism so that either independent work or employments in the fields would be possible after the difficulties had been surmounted.
Now, many years later, I've come to realize that anything I hope to achieve needs to be an active concern while the difficulties persist. So it's a triple focus, really -- the search for regular work in the fields, the surviving of the difficulties presently at hand, and the independent work that might turn out to be the central work of life.
It's taken a long time to make that turn, but I don't think I would have acted differently in the earlier times if I had been a wiser beast. There is a logic to each circumstance; the trick is to keep both the awareness of the actual present circumstance and the integrity of the logic associated with it as clear as possible.
The renaming of the Kennedy Center might be a significant mistake. It's a status thing -- he, and any other New Amsterdam corporatist would likely try to do the same at the Met Opera or the Met Museum, and the point would be that they couldn't -- the social power of the boards. So it's a personal thing, and therefore risky, but there's also a philosophical wrinkle.
When the Republic becomes corrupt, the Machiavel comes along, the uncouth individualist who reminds everyone that moving fast and breaking things is part of what it means to be human, despite the increasingly museum-like silence of the Republic. But when the Machiavel attacks the hallowed individual personalities of the Republic, they're working against their own strength. Much wiser to wage war with an army of faceless bureaucrats.
Cold has returned again. 'Tis the season, I suppose. Surviving.
Arguably a mistake to return to the homeland after the first extended absence to a city swamped with highly materialistic tourists. The spell over their minds, that makes them endlessly desire objects in a rather craven mindset, and then, more importantly, pay for them, seems almost to serve as a leveraging of the biomass for the concentration of capital. There was a different sunlight in Philadelphia some years ago, I think.
The impulse is to get back to Bosnia or Serbia, though aside from being two very spiritually powerful places, I'm not sure why those two specifically come to mind, and I'm certain that the folks in either one would look askance at the list.
Once your life transcends appearances, things get a bit complex. There is no one to give you an indication of what one should do or think, no one to read you in to the plot, the plot having been revealed to be a thin conceit of the scribbler of the otherwise worthwhile fiction. One simply goes on.
Although I continue to arc back towards the world in my work, and hence have been reading a lot of law and legal history lately, any time not spent reading or thinking about philosophy seems wasted. So I waste time in order to attempt to be of service to an increasingly alien scholarly discourse.
Good workout at the gym. As there was no weekday Mass to sprint off to at the end, did a double session. Corpore sano. "...when the water runs muddy, I wash my cloak."
Onward.
Interesting lieder rhyme: Christbaum/selig traumme.
Rain.
Life in the digital/algorithmic gulag continues. Quite convinced that with time, having to live in this manner in this prosperous of a society will seem a political condition as real as those sent to Siberian camps (with, it should be noted, houses), carrying signed and stamped paperwork from the district soviet.
I actually built the Balkan digital nomad years on a remarkably thin foothold of being paid a fraction of market rates to do mind-numbing academic work on sporadic contracts -- the only possible way to live on that within the scope of American/European civilization was in southern Europe, and I'd like to think I made something remarkable out of it, thanks to the remarkable nature of the places I found. Some decent thought, criticism and study -- not to mention all of the $5 theatre/symphony tickets and kefir in the afternoons.
As for the present -- advancing confidently in the direction of my dreams, and waiting for the next unexpected thin ledge of foothold to come along.
Another Abp. (Card) to the big wooden chair, stage right in St. Pats. Was wondering. Homily last Sunday a bit interesting at points -- wheels apparently in motion.
Even at the global center of the electronically mediated social and political world, the in-person event still retains the power to reveal.
The morning meditations here are much more difficult -- even listening to the tape-delayed liturgy of the word from the academic chapel beforehand, the mind feels as if weighed down by lead, and once or twice, I've even drifted off while writing.
Theory 1 -- The structure of the meditation provides a comparison across worlds, and since the same task is much more difficult here, there is something locally increasing the level of difficulty for tasks generally.
Theory 2 -- In that I had been habituated to the meditations in times of relative safety and sufficiency, accomplishing them now, given the current difficulties, is much more difficult.
To mull.
Always make it look easy. Sprezzatura. "Backwards, and among heels." That sort of thing.
The reason is quite simple. Most people, trusting appearances, don't know what the world is. And without knowing what the world is, noticing a fellow who is seemingly exerting extraordinary force just to survive can awaken less-than-helpful inclinations.
It's the difference between staring into the abyss, and staring down the abyss. And, given the effects, it's a bit like whistling down the wind.
Vollman's peroration proving interesting. The Romanian/Bulgarian vampiric sections seem to be an allegory for something, but I've only read his later, straight stuff, not the earlier, slanted stuff, so perhaps it's a fascination in itself. Doubtful, though. Bit like the rat wars in Pynchon's V. And the Roland Hedley-esque weeklong war correspondent's return to Sarajevo makes for good lightness of being in a city of shadows. (And ending the tale at the Yellow fortress, which is where I ended my narrative as well, is spot-on. Hopefully not ironic.)
Fighting vainly to keep conscious during mediation after Mass. In fairness, the conscious/unconscious ratio at the original Gethsemane gave long odds as well.
It occurs to me that I've spent a considerable amount of time in recent years functioning at my absolute physical and mental limit, given the circumstances. I have my doubts as to whether this is an unalloyed good. As bad as it is to be comfortable, difficulty, especially when extreme and extended in time, can transform the action.
There's been a cold spell of late here -- over the last three or four days. Given present difficulties, this has been determinative of much, but I appear to have been able to keep slogging though (albeit on impulse engines rather than warp speed), thanks to increased protein in meals and layers of clothing.
(Teetotal, of course. It's been some time since I've had sufficient hearth and economy for vino with dinner.)
There's a bit of an art to the "Like the Drifter" mode. You can't pull it off as James Bond, but the important thing is to retain the possibility of slogging through a tough bit and then shifting into James Bond mode for a few hours. The surprisingly large number of human catastrophes wandering the city counsel caution when dealing with these forces of nature. One doesn't want to turn into a national socialist or a socialist national, but the intensity common to the speculative idealist and the commissar is really the only way to get through this kind of thing. Life on the frontier wasn't characterized by American niceness and ease.
Gently down the stream -- take it easy, but take it.
Tourists literally swarming through the research libraries. Right on top of the tables, chattering. Ventilation off for some reason. Supremely unpleasant, impossible to think, let alone start the work of the day well.
I'd delay the star of work until after the tourist hours, but given the late opening, the additional hour would lose the morning.
It's not that disproportional in the scheme of things that my attention is still so strongly with theatre and the arts generally. Just after undergrad, I worked with a small theatre in Cincinnati while doing admin work during the day -- ended up working with some of the global execs at a major firm during daytime hours, contacts which would certainly have sufficed for a prosperous career in consumer products. Similarly, after the conservatory masters, I did the same type of admin work in global c-suites in NYC, and then segued into developing a website with an exec from one of the large venues in the city -- both of these, had they been what I was doing, would have allowed me to carve out a decent niche in the arts-affiliated marketing world, or the marches and fens outside of the big-money corporate world. As before, I was tempted, but there is such a thing as a coherent life, and the work of one's life, so I actually fought quite hard to keep either from being a full-time first-priority focus. In the end, although I didn't, like Blackstone, bid farewell to my muse, she was kidnapped in short order, and then began the second of the three peculiar attempts at a coherent career -- the law.
Picked up Vollman's latest and last work -- and it begins on the familiar streets Centar Municipality, Sarajevo. Brilliant. So at least one thing of the mind has some go to it at present.
Would vanish to Bosnia, Serbia, or points east in a heartbeat, if I thought I had sufficient means for the journey. Present living situation and work is at best useful, and (perhaps simultaneously) at worst, more than a bit risky, In the language of computer games (which I notoriously don't play), I'm picking up the points to be found in the scene (making the annotations on works at NYPL I'd likely not find elsewhere for things I hope to write), but as to the larger game, I don't think things are going that well, frankly.
PS, still wondering at how V placed a piece in L'Osservatore Romano. Must have an old-school-capable agent.
Watched the crowds surging past as I had a bite to eat after leaving the library. Everyone in comfortable clothes, ambling down the street. I find myself looking for some signs of nobility about them, something that suggests a claim to possess something of intangible value that suggests a power or mastery vis a vis general relation to the world, visible and invisible. But it appears that nothing in them suggests to them that this would be desirable. They are in the great city, wearing comfortable clothes, likely having paid thousands for the privilege.
More, as with many of these reservations about the ways of my country, the most troubling thing is that they likely see it as a virtue. Merely unpretentious good-hearted folks walking down a sidewalk.
Pretend, folks. Try it.
Stopped in again at the philharmonic to eavesdrop the Handel a second time. Perhaps my imagination, but some of the funereal tempos in the second half (αναστασοσ) seemed to have been tightened up. Perhaps there's a tacit understanding that guest conductors use a bit less interpretive freedom with the weekend subscriber crowd. Hadn't slept in quite some time, though, so listening to the pece while trying to keep on the right page of the Goethe biography I was finishing proved surprisingly challenging. (Not all neighborhoods in the city have book-return boxes, so there are designated "book-finishing" zones to keep the knapsack light.) Might be my last visit to the concert qua lobby -- it's a lot of bother to go through to sit in the lobby and listen to the house sound on a distant speaker. Much more of a concert event than a drop-by cafe at this point.
---
To be absolutely clear, the present visit, on a continuum between holiday jaunt and death-defying salto mortale to the edge of the swarming crowds circling the abyss of darkness -- well, all told, I'd tend to go with the latter category. Still a bit hopeful, though as exhausted as I've ever been.
--
Notion: one reason people are a bit lost -- their vocabulary. The set of words that they use to describe things in the world tends towards simple existence, rather than focusing the mind on the purposes of life. Our manner of speech is dispositive. Vocabulary is logos -- you can't express a second logos using the words of the world, because each word relates to every other word, whether that be inference or deferance [sic]. Perhaps the reason the people are wandering like lost sheep too oblivious to realize that they're lost is that their purposes have been extinguished by implication.
An idle philosophical point after reading one too many spy stories: When a part of the government that does confidential work takes some basically good people, isolates them and their children from society, and has a rather profound effect on their minds and spirits, the only opprobrium involved falls on the government agency, not the people involved. If you decide to build the unhappiness house, the souls inside will be unhappy.
Hence my present aversion to the cult of Le Carre, though I was once a devoted reader (and prayed the office for the dead, sitting in the old apartment by the transcontinental rail in Fargo, when I head that he had passed away). Popular perceptions about confidential government work changed after those BBC mini-series, and it's rather important for a democracy to have the correct idea about the nature of its government agencies. Don't idolize the shock troops, as someone said once.
No opprobrium on the souls involved. Absolvo omnes. But do try to mend the agencies.
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