Piece By Piece, and Step By Step. Deserts and Oases.

When one has tried a lot and for a long time and to no avail to find people to talk with about things one cares a lot (if not the most), in a city that sends ten people to the new Malick's, and she has almost given up hope at the place of her residence, it seems like a small miracle that "all of a sudden" there is a theatre reading circle and a second proposal from another circle for theatre as well. Is she dreaming now? Or, was it a bad, too bad of a dream? We started with William's The Night of Iguana and are turning the page to Wilson's Fences and Osborne's Look Back In Anger.

Is it all of a sudden? Or, is this exactly the right time, as one has grown up to the task by now? One has been closing her eyes, imagining and nurturing the idea of the not-to-be-found (?) oasis in this desert of all neighbourhoods. She must have thought of the ideal fervently and for a long time. And here the newly-born ideal, already and timely dressed up in real and elaborate chats in the here and now. Let us think about the desert from the perspective of the oasis. My dearest Plato, indeed the love of ideals is a great motivator, and the particular chats with individuals pave our way to their realization. How well you have been teaching us, dear.

On another note, or rather, along the same lines, I was delighted to learn from all the people who commented on a paper on the philosophers' pleasures of learning in the Phaedo that was first aired at our Western Plato Conference 2016 and I am thankful for many chats with many individuals ever since (am I repeating my message?). It has been accepted by Classical Quarterly, in the meantime. Now I am working on something else and then another piece. Always in dialogue. The rhythm is given by the exchanges with individuals all way long. Thanks, Nick, for making me listen to myself in San Diego that evening (the greatest virtue of the dialectician it is, for sure much more difficult than to simply listen to the interlocutor): I started with love of types and, oh Dieu, ended with love of individuals, or, if you wish, the Diotima's ladder upside down, even if not à la Alcibiades.

The Director of Miracles. Tarkovsky. From his Mirror.

PS: Subtle caution prevails against experiencing too mediocre, if not devastating, performances at Stratford ON or COC Toronto (sorry: it does not suffice to have a director from Berlin!), at least not before scrutinizing critiques...After an unparalleled King Lear in NYC (BAM), and before Othello at the Globe London UK, there is no space for spoiled moments.

PPS: Conferences are announced that create strong conflicts in one. How nice it would be to propose the piece on dialectical power as the power to make one listen to and get to know oneself for the conference on Alcibiades I at Cambridge this coming fall. I had to hold me back throughout the period of submission of abstracts, after the very intriguing year of reading this dialogue at NYU. One wishes one had more heads, hearts and, if not, for sure, time... Discernment is a virtue to acquire and further cultivate on all possible levels.

As for the end of the summer and after a conference at King's College UK, the most beautiful Greek sea of all I have swum so far and the most awesome company of all I know. Are we there yet? Nope. In the meantime, my salsa teacher says I am dancing like a swimmer...not a compliment (though not as bad as "dancing like...a scuba-diver"!!) I am getting there and the process is fun.

After the multiple fires and the many deaths in Greece: our prayers are with the people there as they are with many others all around the world. How many crimes were committed that led to the eighty-seven deaths in the areas close to Athens! And on top of everything, (small) part of the so-called orthodox clergy is drawing from the Old Testament, complacently describing and resentfully fighting for a God that punishes and burns. Absolutely no limit nor discernment when and where it is most needed: in each and every moment. May we learn how to learn it, each of us differently. Ideologists' utterance and silence smell blood: in and out of churches one can search for and find refuge for one's bloated ego and many more passions and pathologies. Discernment.

The last scene from Tarkovsky's Sacrifice.