Yearning for Daylight again, I broke the habit and habitus of Total Night by leaving the house before dawn and walking toward Center City… Always a time of looser thoughts. Once upon a time, in Chicago, while reeling from some effed-up sleep schedule, I awoke in my brother’s apartment well before twilight, and made my way downtown, to spend the entire morning floating in total rapture… Prompted mostly by the rapturous architecture of Chicago— Mies Van der Rohe, Marina Towers, Chicago Tribune. The city allows for much better vistas than New York City, which has more of a glass-and-concrete canyon aspect. I drifted along Michigan Avenue, in awe, and scribbled illegible notes on through the afternoon.
Likewise, on this day in Philadelphia, I soaked up Sun’s heat like a crocodile. Enjoyed the easy dawn— the purplish orange— and lounged around Rittenhouse, thinking. Rittenhouse is very soothing to the person committed to a day without sleep. Makes it easier. The fountains stand in for its rhythms. The stone cools the brain. Veering from any habit or habitus— or doing most anything of worth— always demands commitment, a word of great philosophical value. Its opposite would be akrasia, usually translated as a “weakness of will,” more or less. In any event, commitment and akrasia are pretty heavyweight terms in the first-personal struggles and strategies of the Agent; while remaining fairly meaningless to the Observer— to the sociologist, to the spectator, to the Descriptive Eye.
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