Bookmarks: Martin Schwarzschild and Montesquieu

At present I keep reading the same sentences again and again in Schwarzschild's The Structure and Evolution of the Stars, and the Reynolds constants, adiabatic temperature gradients and convective fluxes are all a bit beyond me. So today I read more in a newly published book about western progressivism in the Middle East throughout history, and have had a strange déjà vu experience in the latest chapter because I am quite sure that the story of Rifaa Bey and fellow Egyptian students traveling in early 19th century Paris under the aegis of strict guardians is familiar from another source.

In the evening I read Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. It is likely due to the circumstances of life at present rather than the intrinsic quality of the book, but the Lettres haven't delighted me nearly as much as Voltaire's stories and Cyrano de Bergerac and Jan Morris's Writer's World did before. So far. But I almost travelled past the U-Bahn stop because it was so absorbing, and I liked Montesquieu's retold fable of the troglodytes.

First the troglodytes were mean and selfish, and each cared only for his own welfare. But then good troglodytes formed their own community, and are almost as amusingly extreme in their altruism as the former troglodytes were amusingly extreme in their venality.

From Montesquieu:

Je ne saurois assez te parler de la vertu des Troglodytes. Un d'eux disoit un jour: Mon père doit demain labourer son champ; je me lèverai deux heures avant lui, et quand il ira à son champ, il le trouvera tout labouré.

On vint dire à un autre que des voleurs avoient enlevé son troupeau: J'en suis bien fâché, dit-il; car il y avoit une génisse toute blanche que je voulois offrir aux dieux.

On entendoit dire à un autre: Il faut que j'aille au temple remercier les dieux; car mon frère, que mon père aime tant et que je chéris si fort, a recouvré la santé.

Ou bien: Il y a un champ qui touche celui de mon père, et ceux qui le cultivent sont tous les jours exposés aux ardeurs du soleil; il faut que j'aille y planter deux arbres, afin que ces pauvres gens puissent aller quelquefois se reposer sous leur ombre.

Un jour que plusieurs Troglodytes étoient assemblés, un vieillard parla d'un jeune homme qu'il soupçonnoit d'avoir commis une mauvaise action, et lui en fit des reproches. Nous ne croyons pas qu'il ait commis ce crime, dirent les jeunes Troglodytes; mais, s'il l'a fait, puisse-t-il mourir le dernier de sa famille!

On vint dire à un Troglodyte que des étrangers avoient pillé sa maison et avoient tout emporté. S'ils n'étoient pas injustes, répondit-il, je souhaiterois que les dieux leur en donnassent un plus long usage qu'à moi.

Shopping and the Thundershower

On an impulse I announced last week to my colleagues that I would be playing badminton at 2 p.m. on Tempelhofer Feld, and that they were free to play too. As far as I could tell a thrill of bemusement and interest ran through the company, since my sociability is lamentably scarce. The weather was one central concern, and one colleague also doubted if he would come if one of our rare 'team events' — this time held in a beer garden at the Hasenheide park — on Friday would lead him to sleep in too long.

Yesterday I realized that at home there is only one badminton shuttlecock that the siblings and I have been using, which is threadbare at the nose and intact but grubby in the feathers Although there are tattered remains of other birdies that might still manage to fly in a traditional arcing motion.

I decided to go to a shop in Mitte instead of the Schlossstraße. There it turned out that SportScheck, where I wanted to procure aerodynamically reliable badminton birdies, was in the elegant grey and glass hulk that is the Mall of Berlin. It towers near Potsdamer Platz, hoping to catch the tourists who have just taken selfies in front of the fragment of the Berlin Wall or walked from the Brandenburg Gate, and the Canadian embassy.

After entering the chasm between the 'West' and 'East' side of the mall, I consulted the closest signs with the shop brands plastered on them that I could find to see what side was relevant for me. The brands were also elegantly labelled inside the correct side of the mall once I found it, and I spotted the shop on the first floor above ground level.

It's difficult to retell properly, but once a few years ago my brother Ge.'s cell phone alarm kept ringing jauntily, because it was time for him to go to an early shift at his apprenticeship. It was in Ge.'s and J.'s room, and J. looked like he was asleep. But then he said in a small, exhausted voice, 'I'm in hell.' Being in a shopping mall impressed me similarly. I was less than glamorously dressed and coiffed, and feeling warm because of the weather and the walk from the Kulturforum station. (I got out of the bus early.) Working in a consumerism-related company also makes me sensitive about rampant capitalism, since there is plenty of time and occasion to Think Deep Thoughts about it; and at present I'm in a very money-saving frame of mind.

The Goodbye

I haven't wanted to write anything on this blog until after the memorial service for my father happened, which it did yesterday, just to have privacy.

It's said that grieving is a strange process, so I've felt justified in being cheerful and normal one moment, and accepting that I am going to be extremely gloomy the next. Right now I'm in one of the glum stretches, so I don't want to write too much.

I hope I can also see and find the fine qualities in people who are not Papa or the rest of my family, because I had the subjective and probably snobby habit of measuring people against him and not thinking that they quite reached the mark. He believed, I think, that it's pointless to feel restricted to the idealization and pursuit of an abstract goodness, like a distant figure of God; one must seek it in the one place one may ever see it: in one's fellow man.

Extroversion has also been forced on me a bit, which has its disadvantages because I find it exhausting, but it has made me feel less lonely.