Geographical fix. It's fairly ridiculous to think of how much of my life depends on geography. Of course I'm not exclusively talking about my exterior life. My inner moods and reactions are deceptively connected to my surroundings and my proximity to the people who fill up my past and present (and future, even if only in fantasies). It's also hard to keep track of the morphing that takes place when I travel. Sometimes I travel to visit one person, or to distance myself from another, but it's easy to overshoot your target and end up too close or too far away from the persons in question.

I can also be duped (upended) when I travel for business or tourist reasons. A particular environment or city can bring up feelings and recollections that end up affecting my dreams and bent. There's that old cliche, no matter where you go, there you are. That's what's so deceptive about geographical fixes. Your intertwined souls have their own needs and reasons, regardless of surroundings.

I think I know why I like to eat. It's because I am alive. Hunger affirms aliveness. That's the other side of the coin of desperate, void-filling overeating. It is the irrepressible joy of affirmation (or affirmation of joy), although taken a bit too far sometimes.

The desperation also comes in the form of holding on to that happy feeling for dear life. Or trying to multiply it, intensify it. I think I do that in my music, too. I push my joyfulness or sorrow or any edgy expression to its brink. And I guess it gets me into trouble there too, physically and also interpretively.

I eat overexuberantly because I am afraid the day will come when I will not feel that exuberance about living, and somehow stuffing my face will either make up for that lack later on, or delay its onset. The day may come when I do not have the inclination to eat. I will not have that absolutely wondrous feeling associated with hunger and oral fixation. So what I have to remind myself of is that I can simply enjoy the present association of hunger, eating and joie de vivre without fear of the future, or sadness over what is not delightful in my life. Maybe it's another way of saying, simply be pleased to be alive!

On another topic, I noticed tonight that the level I must attain of muscular rest needs to be greater than the average person's. I have to rest as vigorously as I work. This refers specifically to cello-playing muscles. It could also apply to anyone's focal points of physical exertion.

Is everything connected? Is my personality the dictator of other things in my life?

I am waiting for the natural progression to adulthood to continue. I don't want to believe that I missed the boat, that the ship has sailed. What would it take to complete that step? Is it possible in an instant? Or many instants strung together? Is this journaling a first step? It always seems to help to journal like this. It helps sort out my jumble of ideas, to give me some direction to go in. Instead of wallowing.

I am still stuck mimicking others. I have not been able to determine my own destiny, make my own decisions. That's why I say I'm not a man, but a mouse, a child, a girl. I live a vicarious life. But it's almost funny that I think things can or will change without me changing first. It's funny that I think things are so compartmentalized that way. It's silly. Everything's interconnected.

It's all stuck inside me. I wrote for an hour last night, and I feel I just scratched the surface. It never ends. I can reread my past journals and marvel at the discoveries and openings I stepped through. But it's as if I reset myself after a short while. It's as if I am starting from scratch. This is why I feel I must trust the little feeling that says there is so much more yet to be unearthed.

Part of me would like to think I am 10 or 20 or 40% through after an intense venting session like last night's. Maybe I delved into a few topics to some degree. But there are indeed umpteen more to go. I always like it when I have a direction to go in. That comes from an outside source of wisdom like a book or guru. That can be my impetus for further self-exploration.

I took a nap before the concert tonight, and it gave me an ease at the outset of the performance that I don't often feel without a great deal of concentration and (non)effort. Last summer I blogged about trying to play with utter looseness, a la Perlman. I felt it oddly unnatural and unsatisfying to not exert much effort, perhaps due to the contrast from what I am accustomed to. Tonight I remembered another phase I went through - Krishnamurti immersion. He frequently talks about non-effort, non-conflict, non-worry and non-thinking. They are tantalizing concepts, but the last time I perused one of his books I was less than taken by his philosophizing.

I like the idea of extending the technical issues I have on the cello out to the rest of my existence. That's of course been a great quest and fantasy of mine for decades.

As the concert progressed, I gradually lost that pleasurable ease. It tends to be fleeting like that. It's as though I like to have something to butt up against. I like friction, resistance. I need them, more to the point. I realized that I also like to hear other performers with some of that taste for friction. I am unmoved by totally comfortable, unperturbed players. It's like watching a piece of cardboard play music.