The Obvious

Threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of two of our closest and most faithful allies, Canada and Denmark, makes me sick. It's repulsive. It's dishonorable. It's also incredibly stupid, but I don't even care about that. Stupid can be mended. Dishonor is forever.

(I don't often talk about daily politics, because others are so much better equipped and more skilled at it, but occasionally it's worth saying the obvious in so many words. My penchant for the long view and the global picture might give the impression that I think that immediate and local issues are unimportant. I don't, at all; I'm just particularly inept at addressing them. But when silence might be taken for complicity, I do think that someone with a public platform, however tiny, ought to speak up. So I might begin the next few blog posts with little statements like this.)

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It does feel ridiculous, cultivating myself while the country is wrecking itself, but what else am I to do? I must work on something, and I’m the only thing at hand. We are just at the beginning of a cascade of crises, and the only thing I’m sure of is that more will be required of me, in the new world: that there will be less room for self-indulgence and self-pity. People urge me to go easy on myself, and while I appreciate their compassion and benevolence, I think they’re wrong. What I need is to go hard on myself. I have piddled away much of my life going easy on myself.

And behind it all, the Good of the Neoplatonists, the Nature of the Stoics, whatever the hell it is: that without which nothing actually makes sense: that which dissolves whenever you look at it directly and try to put it to use. It will not be used.

Humility is the hardest of the virtues. To do the work at hand: here, now.

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When I was four years old, my parents took me to Disneyland. Underwater in Captain Nemo's submarine, I looked out through the portals. Monsters of the deep were everywhere. A shark lunged at the window; I was terrified. My mother tried to reassure me, saying, "It's all right, Evan, it isn't real." Then a giant squid attacked us; my father said it also wasn't real. At this point, my parents tell me, I looked up and asked, "Are we real?"

-- Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being, chapter 6

Replegándome

Closing in on myself, like those tiny white blossoms of miner’s lettuce at nightfall. This, here, now: studying, thinking.

Global neoliberalism has run itself into a ditch: offering people absolutely nothing larger than themselves to be part of, to cherish, to be proud of, was a strategy that was bound to lose: though it didn’t do it before trashing most of most people’s virtues. So we get these ugly, crude fundamentalisms, that would laughable if they were not so capriciously destructive and cruel. The idea that there’s anything “medieval” about Isis or White Christian Nationalism is absurd. They are wholly and distinctly modern, the responses of people emptied of virtue and starved of meaning. I know, I sound like one of their theorists when I talk that way. Still. If you don’t offer people anything substantial to eat they’ll chew the bark off the trees. There’s nothing surprising about it. What’s surprising is that we’ve wobbled along so long in this country without disaster.

It’s all very well to talk that way, of course – satisfying and invigorating, clears the pores – but it’s bombast. The florid language is a tell. And what it tells is that I myself only very dimly suspect and guess at what that larger thing is: I have nothing satisfying to offer anyone. People who vaguely assert a higher power are more definite than I am: I immediately frown and think: “just one? Higher than what? Is it, are they, on my side? Distinct from me? Does it, do they, subsume me, or participate in me, or divvy me up so that bits of me serve as poker chips in unguessable games?” This is not the stuff that religious refuge is made of. I have nothing to offer, there.

But anyway, my duty vis-à-vis it, and/or them, seems at this point pretty clear to me. I have no persuasive skills, and nothing to persuade anyone of, anyway. “They also serve who only stand and wait”: well, I hope so, because that appears to me to be my job. Or at least, to stand and listen, to wait and watch.

I guess the dignified way to say that is “he spends his days in study, prayer and meditation." That sounds respectable; way more respectable than it feels.

A Lamentable Case

Well! So far all my struggles are for naught. I have neither straightened up nor flown right; I am fat as a goose prepped to provide foie gras; I am impotent, anxious, tired, and unkempt. My beard straggles and my hair lurches over my collar. A lamentable case.

On the other hand, I am more or less over my cold (how can you really tell, when you’re so systemically inflamed?) And I should be able to take up exercise again. Start over again. Again.

Saturday! Without a meeting with Jarrett, who is in Mexico City. So all the day’s resources are free. We can do what we like.

I think we may need to stage all these changes, Monsieur le Favier. Pressure at all points is not working here: it’s only making you fretful and petulant, and threatening even those things that were secure (morning back exercises and broccoli, for example. Heaven knows back trouble is not going to help you at this point, you foolish old Hechicero.)

The constant stream of appalling political news does not help, of course. But presumably that’s a constant from now on: if things get better eventually, it’s unlikely to happen during my lifetime. So forget about the daily news. If you think about political life at all, think long-term. Think of what needs to be cultivated that can be passed on to future generations, so they can build someday. Not habits of outrage and rumination, that’s for sure.

Recall, my dear Lord of All Creation, that you are not yet retired: you have no more time or resources at your disposal than you have had these last twenty years. So maybe ratchet back the expectations a little?

There is something missing from the program, and that missing thing, maybe, is company. Maybe you need someone to read the Phaedrus with. Alas that Portland State has no Classics! What the hell kind of university has NO classics department? That’s nuts. But anyway. All in good time.

For the moment, I think we need to set a schedule and timeline for this restoration-and-improvement program. And the first projects, quite obviously, are the intertwined projects of re-establishing our exercise and re-establishing our food regimen.

Note well, young Favier, that it will only take two or three days of eating sanely to feel much better. You won’t get skinny in a couple days, but the inflammation will subside, as will the self-disgust, almost immediately. You won’t have to fly right for months and get to 170 lbs before you feel better. You’ll feel better almost at once.

So I think this is the February project. Eating and exercise. You already laid out in detail the eating. Just follow that, and track your numbers. Two weeks from now you’ll know if you need to change something. (Change the meal timing slightly, though, to a 12:30 lunch and a 5:30 dinner; the former times were too early.) Ask Martha to hid the candy dish.

And now, we just restart the exercise program, but with the reps set back by ten or fifteen percent. We are not focused on gaining strength or muscle bulk at ALL, right now. We are just restarting our program, and it would be fine if the reps were cut in half. In fact, it might even be wise to start with extravagantly reduced reps. Say two thirds. If that really leaves lots of slack, we’ll take it up soon enough.

So February is the diet-and-exercise project. Nothing else needs to happen this month. March can be the month in which I open a second intellectual front, or quit all social media, or whatever it is I do next.

This would have worked last time, if I hadn’t come down with that cold, if Martha had not done her Colorado trip, if she had not been so anxious. It’s time to stop pretending her anxiety doesn’t affect you. It affects you deeply.

But my point at the moment is simply: there was nothing at all wrong with your program. That’s not why it derailed. So you’re not being Pollyanna, in trying to start over. It’s reasonable to expect it to work.

February 2025, the month of restoring the diet-and-exercise regimen. Go, sir.

Circle

Well. A new day, bright outside, dark within. "Put not your trust in princes," says that most cynical of texts, but we do, even when we think we're not. Till we come to the end of the paragraph and suddenly fall down the stairs of a blank page. 

A van drives by, its running lights flickering oddly, rhythmically. Is that a thing now? I become every day less at home in the world. A mercy, I suppose, designed to make it easier to say goodbye. "I have had my world as in my time"; but now it's not my time, and I have become insubstantial, transparent, barely sustaining enough gravity to haunt my own house.

"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me," says Richard; since we were speaking of princes. But -- enough of all that. It's time to shut this book. The circle is closed.

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So now it's time to cast loose: nobody is going to accompany me on this trip. A thing I was prepared for as a child, but forgot in jostling flattery of adulthood. Age brings, in this respect anyway, clearer sight. And really, I'm ready for it.

Not that it's a simple trip, or one to be done all at once. It will be as halting and vacillating as all my voyages. And I won't really be alone. That's just the way they talk, forgetting their wives and children and servants, while they're strutting on the stage and monarchizing. That's another thing to be done with, that negligence, and taking mercies and kindnesses for granted. I've always despised those people who declare "everyone dies alone!" -- who then proceed comfortably to a well-attended hospital bed thronged with nurses and anxious dependents. Yah. What the hell are you talking about? You don't know crap about dying, or about solitude.

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You will understand, I hope, that I'm not talking about dying. Well, yes, I was talking about dying, but that was just an automatic association of ideas, No, I'm talking about wandering in the hills for a little bit, about the sunrise and sunset, about the quarter moon glimpsed over the housetop. 

Okay, Enough for now. Lots of love.

Third Day

And again, so far so good. 

Grateful this morning for Matute's magnificent Gudú. I just reread the scene in which Predilecto is sent to spy on the children, who discover him easily and pull him into their play, out of bonds of time. The immense sadness of leaving that, and forgetting that: tiptoeing out of the room when they have all fallen asleep. She's so good about forgetting. The epigraph of the book:

Dedico este libro a la memoria de H. C. Andersen, Jacob y Wilhelm Grimm y Charles Perrault.

A todo lo que olvidé.

A todo lo que perdí.

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I dedicate this book to the memory of H. C Andersen, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and Charles Perrault. 

To all that I have forgotten.

To all that I have lost.

Victoria Moul notes that ". . . anyone whose primary interest is literary is likely I think to reach a point in life after which most of your, let’s say, “top quality” literary reading, the really transformational stuff, is re-reading. When this point occurs surely varies and in a second or third language one might (happy thought!) never reach that point. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that any fairly committed reader of literature gets to this stage, in their mother-tongue at least, somewhere around mid-life."

Certainly this is true for me, and so the gift of Matute is doubly precious: it is both a transformational experience, and utterly new to me. It's new even in the simple narrative sense: this is the first time in years that I've read a narrative and genuinely not known where it was going. I read with some bemusement all these spoiler warnings attached nowadays to discussions of even the most formulaic fiction -- in fact, especially to the most formulaic fiction. Do you people seriously not know what's coming? That's just weird.

A long-spun tendril of cloud in the winter sky: and the morning backing in slowly, returning to the world.

I wrote a post about political hope the other day, and un-published it, because it made a claim of fact that I couldn't immediately back up, and I will not add to the noise and confusion, if I can help it. But in fact I am more hopeful than I used to be, in a number of ways. I may resurrect a more thoughtful version of that someday. Or perhaps not. Coming to terms with the new political reality is something we all have to do, but I am uneducated and naive about these things -- for one thing -- and for another thing, I think we are likely to be out of power for a good long time, and time invested in following the minutiae of U. S. Federal politics, by amateurs, is probably time wasted. I applaud those fighting the desperate rear-guard action, but someone also needs to go ahead and prepare the refuges we will take. I may be better suited to that task.

Anyway. Lots of love, dear ones. 

Second Day

So far, so good: but the first day, when the impetus is strongest, is easiest. The second and third days are generally the most precarious: and there's lots of destabilizing events coming along. Still, woke this morning with a grateful sense of peace. I will try to remember that, when besieged by false promises: the promises of this discipline are scant, but they're kept. 

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Why, I wonder, have the words fluvial and lacustrine never won currency in English, when so many other French/Latinate adjectives have swaggered into the language and made themselves at home? But it's a river boat and a lake house, never a fluvial boat, never a lacustrine house. Maybe something about the water generates a stubborn Dutch homeliness.

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Fog this morning, and a damp cold that seeps into the marrow. We're at the wicked time of the year, hovering around freezing, inviting ice storms. If I had an amulet against ice, I'd wear it. I have a large tolerance for most of the weathers and natural mischances of the world, but I don't like the ice, as I don't like the wildfires. You should be able to walk on the ground and breathe the air.

Wobbly and Out of Control

Hah! Well, no wonder I was feeling like everything was wobbly and out of control. Everything was wobbly and out of control.

So. For the food:

Breakfast is the Spanish omelet: leave half the hash browns. (And if the omelet is ridiculously huge, as it was today, you can leave some of it on the plate, too. But you never *have* to leave any of the omelet.)

Snacks available but not required: one apple and one banana.

Lunch is salad and 2/3 glass bowl of soup, and you must begin it by 11:30.

Dinner is salad, and 2/7 of a packet of ground 93% turkey, prepped with a big spoonful of olive oil, and 450 grams of potato, and you must begin it by 4:30.

In two weeks we'll know if this is a weight loss regimen or not: there's no need to guess. The numbers will tell us. At the moment that question is of no interest whatever. The first project here is simply to get aircraft out of its tumble and under control: nothing good happens until that has happened.

You may have to ask Martha to hide that white candy dish.

Throw out the rest of the bagels, unless Martha wants them.

Ipse dixi.

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For the exercise:

Okay. I must work out 4 days out of 7. An easy mnemonic for that while I'm working 3 days per week is simply that any day that is not a work day is a workout day. But really I want the basic pattern to be upper body day, lower body day, rest day. With some latitude: sometimes no rest day, sometimes two rest days. But never three rest days in a row, and always, if I'm looking backward six days and see only three workouts, I'm due to work out. (This sounds much more elaborate than it is: in practice it's pretty simple. Upper, Lower, Rest.)

Until I get the cardio where I want it, I'm going to stop increasing the rev lunges when I get to two sets of 30 reps (each side) at 5 lbs. (Which is nearly where I am? I think?) The cardio is going to stress the knees: I don't want to pile too much on them.

The cardio is actually the focus: building back the stamina I lost to Covid last year. The program is going to look like this: 

To begin with, short walks every day that is not a lower body day.

Every week, increment the walks by two, where an increment means taking no walk to short, or short walk to regular walk, or regular walk to long walk.

We stop this progression when we're at a weekly regiment of daily regular walks and two long walks. We might or might not at that point progress the long walks, or we might just go back to increasing the weight on the rev lunges. Leave that decision for when the time comes. 

So we're starting at 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5

We're going to 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 16

At +2 per week, this will take five and a half weeks. That seems about right. We should get there around the end of February.

Ipse dixi.

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For the study: yes, you want to be doing BOTH the Spanish and the Greek. And maybe you can do that. Maybe it has to wait until you're no longer working at the Foundation. Maybe it doesn't happen at all, because time and attention are not infinitely elastic. Just relax and get over yourself, young Dale. It is not the most important thing. It is far more important to be doing hard and interesting reading, and to write stuff that is worth reading. THAT is what you actually want to do. The languages are tools for that, not ends in themselves. (Well, actually they're ends in themselves too, and always have been, and always will be: but you don't need to be doing two at once if it just. doesn't. work. Twenty years from now you'll be stone cold and in the ground, Mr Favier. None of this matters THAT much. It is now required of you that you a) get a grip, my good man, and b) relax and give yourself a break. Yes, both those things, and yes, this is a contradiction, and yes, you're just going to have to deal with it.)