Despite an excess of seed, the pigeons have elected to cut out the object of desire and move straight on to rivalry (ignoring the food, pecking each other’s necks). It’s not one or the other, exactly, as they take a break to eat their share from time to time too, but this recent propensity to violence does not augur well. Wings hit the window, the smaller birds take flight, the larger ones puff up their body feathers. One looks engorged, his neck hanging, shivering with rage and desire.
Things seem febrile, though it’s impossible as ever to disentangle one’s own character and mood from larger spirits, of which one too is also a part. Is this what it feels like just before? There are many conflicts already, and war is both terrible and cruel. Reading Agamben’s essay on “stasis” (civil war), haunted by the global antagonism that is at once at the heart of the family and everywhere else, all at once. Where do families end and cities begin? It may be impossible to eliminate tribalism, even at the hands of the most epic abstractions.
Someone sets fire to property belonging to the Prime Minister, and people barely blink. Substations seem to explode on a regular basis, unclear if competency crisis or sabotage. Entire systems seem held together with string and the knowledge of one guy, who has apparently retired.
Walking in the city. Much of it strangely empty, almost like lockdown. There are curious signs, things on the floor, always. A fun game: taking my cue from the slogans on stranger’s t-shirts. One woman wears a shirt that says: “NATURE IS”. This is a spectacular slogan for a meditation: for an hour, everything is Spinozist (I mean, everything is always Spinozist if you’re a Spinozist). Freedom descends from necessity, and what greater freedom than understanding the ways in which one is bound! NATURE IS!
Less wounded by memory lately, though blindsided for a few days by the news of a death of an old friend. Old in every sense apart from age, an additional horror. The uncanny feeling, familiar by now, of the friendship that was already dead, or murdered, or suicided, and the times, long past, when there was a conversation. Cut short by “disagreement” or an expulsion or a betrayal, perceived in both directions. Yet these little moments: looking at the friezes, playing table tennis, the poem about fire.
Church is contemplation, elucidation. I read from Revelation: the lamb, the lamb, the lamb. I like the Agnus Dei the most, the months when the man sings the harmony.
D got his eyes fixed and the world is full of couples again.
Hard to stay inside. Even harder to get back to people. Lists don’t solve the problem, though they momentarily feel like they might. AI makes my teeth hurt. I feel we have neglected our stomachs. I often feel we should just turn it all off and have a decade or so to think about what we’re doing. Do we even understand what a bird is yet?
