All posts by adam@adamsatinsky.com

reflections within

pendulous

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Okay, this is important. It’s one thing to know right and wrong. It’s one thing to know what’s the right thing to do, and what’s the ill-fated thing to do. The trouble is, there are so many little tiny decisions in a day. How am I going to know until after the fact which path is the right one to take? I say that I am learning. Is that really true? Is that really the essence of learning? Accumulating information in order to make the right decisions more often?

Learning Without Accumulation is the title of a Krishnamurti book. I try to teach Cody the essence of wisdom and understanding.

It’s like a see-saw. Or a pendulum. On one end is the bad, addictive, unhealthy things one is attracted to. On the other are the pure antidotes that enact a recovery. I guess I am trying to manage that swing, and in so doing, learning. Little by little I swing less and less. I make fewer and fewer mistakes, and therefore need less and less extreme antidotes. But the pure antidotes instead are becoming a solace for me, a source of wisdom. I want to take them out of the realm of the see-saw effect. Maybe the midpoint, the fulcrum of the see-saw is moving in the direction of health, if I’m living right. So if it ever does eventually stop, it will be in a beautiful place.

Every time I break any of the commandments of health and wisdom, I feel I am back to square one. Even if I am not. I feel it. It is not so much a question of evidence. How could I possibly keep track of my progress? It’s not a life lived if you are only tabulating and charting all the time. That’s been a little achilles issue with me. Not living. Retreating to analysis. I do like to do it. (As is apparent here, I suppose.) (I’d like to think the not so subtle difference between analyzing and philosophizing distinguishes my process.)

everyday observations

Paultry

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Haven’t posted for awhile. Imagine that. It’s a little like coming home though, isn’t it? Maybe my exploration into humanism explains that to some degree. This is a human, not superhuman, exercise and exploration. I never knew it, but I was raised and live my life as a humanist. Not as anything else.

I guess I thought I could notate a couple of discoveries I’ve come upon lately. I unhinged some degree of relief from my left hand pain. I haven’t really verbalized it yet, so it’s a bit foggy. One thing is that the bottom of my hand must be an equal player in this whole exercise. It’s not all about the top. The first realization I had, which I shared with my colleagues, is that the neck is precisely where my thumb wants to be, should be. So I experimented with miming the left hand on thinner, smaller objects, and it seemed to prove my theory out. That was until I tried it on a guitar. Then I realized that there is something else which must be an impediment besides the height of the neck. As it turns out, the width is just as much of a problem, just as on a guitar. Just realizing and acknowledging this issue already helped. Negotiating the obstacle course which is the cello neck will continue to be my task. That is why I started by saying I must give the lower part of the hand great credence in all of this. That is the part which deals with this maze from moment to moment.

The other discovery is regarding another favorite pet peeve of mine – eating. I now see utterly clearly why there are so many fat/chunky people walking around. Restraining yourself from eating til you’re stuffed is just really fucking difficult. And finding that delicate balance between undereating and overeating is nearly un-do-able. I am saying this because I have realized the most obvious thing in the world, the thing I’ve been reticent to admit all these years. You must eat less and move more in order to get to a happy physical state. And when you eat less, you will feel hungry, or at the very least hungrier. So, how horrible is being hungry? Perhaps not so much. Perhaps at my middle age I have discovered worse sensations in life than hunger. Your weight is not a static animal, it is fluid. It is unfair to judge yourself, either positively or negatively, for something that is in a constant state of flux.

everyday observations

harn

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So it hasn’t been a fluke or a character defect after all. It is all about duality. Everything I do causes me to react back. Everything done looks for its opposite. Or some kind of contrary reaction, if an exact opposite isn’t available. Ideally, you don’t do anything. You sit and meditate on nothingness. Because once you do something (eat, walk, converse, laugh, cook) you are only asking for it. I suppose you can attempt to keep the doing to a minimum. Or you can constantly be on guard for the reactions. It seems, however, that being on guard can only mean one thing – meditating. All things come back to meditating on nothingness. On the void. I told Cody that that void is the truth, the reality. All else is distraction. Duality equals distraction. All that is dual is nothing more than a distraction, and it’s distracting us from the truth. It’s a game. Do most people see that? Are we doomed? Why do only a select few pursue that truth? Is it because of what I’m reading about sapiens? A little intelligence can only lead to trouble. It takes a greater amount to get out of it. Is wisdom acquired through knowledge and experience, or is it innate? Why is so much wisdom required to stop thinking? Perhaps the daftest among us are also privy to that fact.
The follow up question is whether this knee jerk reacting is hard wired or adjustable. Reading Sapiens, it would appear almost everything is hard wired to some degree or another. Hard wired biologically, socially, ecologically, culturally, and from the distant past or more recently. Maybe the idea of meditating is to unwire ourselves as much as possible. One wonders how deep you can go with that. You look for the deepest part of yourself I guess. It does feel like blogging taps deep parts, and unglues the adhesive causing stuck-nesses in one’s thinking and behaving.

hypotheses and philosophies

Ham

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Finding the space between the thoughts. This blog is that, it seems. Writing at leisure. Expressing at leisure. Sometimes I wish I could play the cello more that way. Playing on a blank slate. Not so much re-interpreting.
If there is that space between the thoughts, imagine if that space is expanded. Wider and wider. Until there is primarily space, with the occasional thought peppered in. Not vice versa.
Do we waste our mental space with these dualities? Bickering. Back and forth, like a tennis ball. Up, down, in, out. Right, wrong. It’s a game of unending circles. Hamster wheel. Rat race. Nothing accomplished. Wasting 90 point something percent of our lives.

hypotheses and philosophies

Pick it

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I get so tired of my dual-ness. Always one thing or the other. Always vacillating. Loud:Soft. Isn’t it one of those things we learn as toddlers? Opposites. We are trained in opposites. Ugh. Such conditioning.
We can’t have a clear path to growth. Always bumping up against the wall of duality. I am of course grateful to Krishnamurti for enlightening me.
So it starts in childhood, this duality. But it doesn’t end. It goes on and on. It permeates everything. The trouble is, it’s not natural. Nature is not dual. Nature does not chop. Nature doesn’t need these words, for instance. These words are here to redefine the categories we impose on everything. I need these words to find my way through. What a bloody nightmare. It is a nightmare of our own making. Good and evil. Nature doesn’t need that.
When I watch At Close Range it gets me thinking about good and evil. I try to live my life with awareness of good and evil. I love both sides of myself. I hate having to pick sides. Pick a paint color for the bedroom wall. Pick a mattress type. Pick a school for Cody. Pick a religion to subscribe to.
The idea is that if I pick the wrong side, or attempt not to pick one at all, I am destined to bring evil into the world and into my life. If you’re not good, you’re evil. What other choice do you have? You have to pick a side, right? There have to be opposites, right? Republican and Democrat seems to be a common one these days.
One of the lovely outgrowths of duality is judgment. I can say that pretty much every single time I cast a judgment, great or small, I feel something dirty. I feel soiled inside. And the only way I can ever hope to relinquish that dirt is to cease seeing everything as chopped up into two parts. Judging is contagious, by the way. And attracting. You feel good if you see others doing it, since you’re doing it – it validates you. I can’t believe how deep it runs through our culture and our societal development.
Maybe the hardest thing is to stop judging yourself. From there you can release judgment of others.

reflections within

Advaita

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Disappear. Reappear. I would love to be like the bird. Buddhists say it is better to be human. Humans are kings of disarray. Messiness. I think it’s funny to think I should be entertaining people with this blog. Entertaining is precisely the thing I should not aim to do.

I am extremely full. It is a shame. I always feel empty if I am not stuffed. It is an endless see-saw. So predictable and monotonous. Eating, waiting, eating, waiting. It is these sorts of see-saws that must be studied. Seen for what they are – irrelevant. They are everywhere, if you’re willing to look.

Reading Krishnamurti is like this writing space. It evokes that special meditatively magic feeling. It is things like this, unseen things, which seem to be just as crucial as seen ones. Always simmering. Always there.

What did I just do? Why? I just played a concert. But why? It matters. It is unseen, it is unidentifiable, but it matters at least as much as the content of the experience. Otherwise I am just an empty shell once again. An empty shell goes through the motions of experience, but is doomed to repeat them, see-saw-like, for the rest of his life. Even the greatest experience, done more than once, becomes banal, death-march-like.

everyday observations

tooler

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It’s quicksand. The hole that I am constantly trying to dig myself out of. You think you’re up a bit. It’s a hoax. This journal is certainly a good example. How much journaling is enough to give myself that grounding that I can rely on? Does anyone realize just how much I’ve written? A lot. But the hole doesn’t necessarily fill in. My neuroses are signs of digging. They cause me to dig back in. I fill in some dirt, and I shovel it back out. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. How can everything be connected in that way? Are we spiritual beings having a human experience? Is that how? Is spiritual another way of saying soulful or emotional? Are emotions the modern day religious terminology? We took our feelings out of a God-based realm and into a scientific metaphor. It’s ironic. If we’re basically talking about the same thing, why the heated debate? Also why do I invest myself in the debate? What do I get out of it?

The point is I feel so weird when I’m released from my neuroses for a time. I can’t stand it. Even though it’s what I know I need. The neuroses are such a source of frustration. Whether it’s God, or journal, or new regiment, or happy distraction, or discipline, when something provides that respite, it saves me for a time. Too bad it’s so temporary. It’s that damn hole.

reflections within

au naturel

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Combining the two (or more) pursuits. Maybe it’s connected to the career path thing. I do one thing only. I guess I am in fact in the process of expanding my horizons.

I have put eating well and playing well at the top of my list. I seem to need lists. It’s an annoying grownup thing. Compartmentalizing. We were just talking about that with Cody. He doesn’t have to compartmentalize. He is just 6. He still has a pure connectedness to all parts of himself. Like a sinew. Everything is interconnected. They talked about that at Seacrest.

There’s an interesting question. Where (and who) would I be if I had been schooled differently. I suppose I would have had to have been raised differently in order to be directed towards a different sort of educational setting. So now I sit and journal, semi-publicly, in an effort to complete my existence which may have been stifled from early on. I feel a connectedness when I write. I could have written this way since the beginning. Was it something that wasn’t nurtured? Is that the problem?

cello practice, everyday observations

harness

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If I am so cut and dry about my attachment to the cello, it will affect my approach. I noticed some of that today. It reflects in my mannerisms. It’s nice. Every word I write seems to translate to a physical idiosyncrasy. It’s kind of my dream. As much as I’ve enjoyed/loved writing in spaces like this over the years, I never saw an absolutely direct translation to my music. There are undoubtedly indirect correlations, which I’ve adored. It’s been possibly my chief method of improvement as a cellist – growing as a human being.

So with improvements on two fronts, will I again butt up with my usual problem of combining them? Does it take the wisdom of the ages and the patience of Job to handle 2 sources of growth in one moment? What seems to be a possibility is that endeavoring on only one of those is not sustainable as a manner of living. The undone one will always end up undermining the done. If I play the cello well but eat poorly, the ease and naturalness with the instrument will eventually revert under the pressure. If I eat well but play the cello unsuccessfully, the well-balanced eating will eventually fall away.

everyday observations

clammed

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I know what was bugging George Michael. That voice. That voice from One More Try. It was golden. He could make any sound he wanted. He could evoke any emotion. And of course he was quite good looking. There were probably other exceptional aspects of his early adulthood. These things are not easy to see decay. Maybe the higher you fly, the harder is the fall. You need special people to guide you through the dark and unending mist of aging/growing. I have had many such guides. Even one lovely one who informed me that South Americans and Europeans find bald men sexy.

I can’t forget the feeling of wanting to hang it up. It may be my only hope. When all is lost, you will see the light shining like a tiny dot in the distance. When all expectations are gone, I stop the perpetual block. The block of judgment. The block of ranking. It seemed my friend Monica was gaining that sort of release and wisdom when we played together last season and recently. Maybe you have to play like you don’t care. Maybe I have to do that with more urgency that some others who are physically stronger. There have been other physiological issues in my life that seem to have forced me to live a bit cleaner and wiser than some others. Like I said in the last blog, pain and suffering have been important teachers for me. And it’s not for altruism’s sake. I see the writing on the Wall of Mortality. And I am constantly playing catch-up. More wisdom from another confidante. That life is not stacked in our favor. Which seems to apply to many subjects. On the other hand, we should be feeling lucky that we have the option at least to contemplate and grow. Moreso than the rest of the animal kingdom.