I just realized a funny juxtaposition. I love to dream about the past, but I rarely allow myself to reconnect with it. I can hold it in my imagination but never hold it in my arms. That probably carries over to the present moment, too. It takes a lot to connect. There is this gap, some kind of vacuum wind tunnel barricading me. I end up being oddly choosy about whom I get intimate/close to.

Is it my usual conundrum of finding little to say when I am feeling happy and/or content? Am I incapable of talking about happy things? I guess I have an internal obligation that drives me towards a balanced sort of sincerity. Not rose-colored. If I am going to open my heart, it feels pointless and even derailing to leave out the yuckier stuff. Or even if I don't specify the details, my overall outlook must contain the mixture of the whole spectrum of experience and emotion. I have spent far too much of my life omitting. Either I omit the positive or the negative. Usually this is done to kowtow to someone nearby. Or maybe someone powerfully embedded inside me.

I recently Kowtowed to someone, in the more literal sense of a bow. I felt a deep urge to show my respect and gratitude, and as I had witnessed this sort of gesture in the past, I already suspected what a powerful effect it might have. In this country we don't demonstrate this way to one another, but there is something inexpressibly connecting and rich about it, eliciting a sense of our humanity rarely achieved in other ways.

So are my awkwardness, indecisiveness, stubbornness, closed-mouth-edness, and all the other questionable traits all a reflection of something awry, or something good and possessing of integrity? Is life supposed to be easy and smooth and overtly fulfilling, or is it the struggle that signifies a right path? If I am uncomfortable with much of the expected behavior and status quo, what does that mean exactly? Could it be that I have an inner wisdom that is higher than society's? Higher than the societal norm? Maybe a bit like a Buddha. At least, this is the proposition for the evening.

Maybe I'm more of a philosopher than I realize. I was just reading "This Book Does Not Exist", a book on paradoxes, and I noticed parallels to my thoughts on cello and bow experimentation. It describes philosophies which question reality - like whether 2 seemingly contrary things can exist simultaneously, and likewise whether 2 identical things can coexist - just the sorts of problems I grapple with when I am comparing or trying bows. How can I feel so differently from one minute to the next when the equipment remains the same? Perhaps I should be questioning reality itself. I tend to anyway, but this book makes me feel that I am not crazy in doing so.

The conundrum seems to be that at one moment I feel so sure about how a bow or cello is responding, then in the next I have an utterly alternate sensation. How do you reconcile them? Which one has more validity? Has something changed which I cannot perceive? Or, as I am now thinking, is my actual definition of reality askew? Maybe that gets into religious considerations as well. Sometimes it seems to me that religions are in the business of stretching the limits of what one considers reality. This can be frustrating and lightening at the same time. There seems to be a fine line between philosophy and religion. Maybe one is the practical application of the other. Of course some religions are more practically oriented than others.

Haven't posted for a while. Hope you've muddled without. I have a new diet. Eat until your stomach starts protruding, then stop. Seems easy, right? This came to me in the midst of back spasm hell. I realized that my back has to hold up my stomach at all times, not just in between meals. Somehow I thought it didn't count at the moment of eating. The post-meal big stomach was a necessary anomaly, I figured. It is not reflective of the true state of things. But I know the truth now. And I have a 15 pound weight-loss to drive it home.

I got into breathing last night. It appears to be a good thing. Of course you can have too much of a good thing. But it's nice to be reminded of the centrality of breathing. How many muscles does it encompass? Umpteen. Maybe all. Including the muscles of the mind. I can overfocus on it, of course. I have to remember that it is both a causative and responsive reflex action. In other words, it can both create the looseness in the body and be a result of good body focusing. I should feel at liberty to play with that. Not get stuck in one direction.

I got a crock pot. I've even used it.