Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

Table of Contents:

Autobiographical

Adam Many-Parts 2

I wrote about the joys of a diversified life over a year ago on this blog. It’s relevant to psychology because lots of folks play lots of roles, and this is thus relevant also to role theory. A cartoon ( Baby Blues 11/26/2000 by Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott) noted all the roles of a […]

Adam’s Roots

This is a personal reflection on an associated theme as described elsewhere (today) on this blog: One’s psycho-social or soul roots may not be in the past. It’s possible that they can also be identities that partake of current and even future (envisioned) trends. Certainly that’s true for me. I have a few ethnic roots, […]

Add “Surplus Reality”

I found a book by Rosilyn Wilder, a teacher of creative drama,  titled "A Space Where Anything Can Happen" (New Plays Books, 1977). Yes, it fits with my hope to expand consciousness so that people—not just young people, but old people, too, like my age group!—can make up stuff. In a world (and school system) […]

Age-ing (Growing Older)

I’m age 80 now. My wife and I are reading an intriguing book about ageing titled Aging: An Apprenticeship, edited by Nan Narboe. This book’s goal is to help us think about the finitude of our living and to prepares us for our dying, our mortality, our limitedness. The book got me thinking about my […]

Agnostic

For a while I was agnostic, which means that I affirm that I don’t know about God. This was around the ages of 13 – 22, and I was influenced in this by the writings of Robert Ingersoll in the 19th century and Thomas Paine in the late 18th. Not that I wasn’t interested in […]

All Are Prophets

I was looking through one of Neal Donald Walsh’s Conversations With God series of books and other media, and this notion occurred to me: You and I can imagine vividly, too. It’s just that there has been a cultural taboo against speaking or writing one’s inspiration and then claiming as did the prophets of yore […]

Amplify Your Life

You need not do something record-breaking! It’s find if one just makes a personal statement of one sort or another. Nor must it be on the world-wide web! Playing with alternative versions of reality is an amplification of the principle of creativity. The goal is to live more deeply, and one way of doing this […]

An Idyllic Childhood

My dear wife Allee reminded me this morning that I grew up in “a Disneyland-like world. (Actual Disneyland was built near the end of this period around fifty miles or so south south-east of my home.) What an intriguing idea, and when I thought about it, true. So here’s a little snapshot of a halcyon […]

Annoyances 2014

Well, one way to cope with them is to bring them from the preconscious, hardly articulated “mood” level to explicit and expressed consciousness, so here are some that have come up lately. They’re minor, residues of childish desires, but saying them neutralizes them a bit: – Having to put away stuff. I don’t mind taking […]

Autobiographical Note

I like the following quote by the early 20th century playwright, George Bernard Shaw: “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”     I erroneously did just that, not realizing that I was considerably brighter than others, and also had a bent […]

Awesome! No Problem!

The desk clerk was a young man who responded to matter-of-fact arrangements being made at a hotel with such phrases, instead of saying “okay,” “good,” or “yes, Ma’am.” It’s strange when young people say “awesome” to describe fortunate but really rather mundane events. Or when something has evidently been a big problem, but they work […]

Back 2 the Blog! Yay!

For a few weeks I have been out of it computer-wise and somewhat sickly, physically, too. Finally, with a new computer and coaching from a wonderful mentor at our community Computer Club, I am restoring my internet integrity. Whew! So I have some accumulated web-log entries to catch up with, and also a restored sense […]

Back, Dragon!

When I was young I was very taken by the struggle of the boy in the poem, Jabberwocky, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass. My pretend dragon—let’s call him Poof, because in some ways he came back in the 60s as Puff the Magic Dragon, and I would engage in cartoon-fantasy struggles. […]

Bean uh Splainer

I’m uh splainer. I splain things. You got a thing? I’ll splain it. No problem. I don’t claim to splain it right, according to you or some other standard. I don’t even claim that my splanation will work good. It’s just a splanation. Like a myth. Or a construct, a story, a figment of imagination. […]

Before Cell Phones

Stephan Pastis, who draws the “Pearls Before Swine” cartoon strip, did one lately that touched my sense of growing older. Says it all, doesn’ it?

Behind the Eyelids

Sometimes, more when I’m half-in-dream, the patterns I “see” with my eyes are closed are complex and slightly changing. Here’s a hint. I’m motivated to represent this density of imagery in my art—it represents the nature of the mind. The slight shift into recognizable text near the bottom hints at a related phenomenon: The rapid […]

Being a “Contemplateur”

That term, “contemplateur,” is one I just made up, describing those who get a kick out of contemplating life, and maybe even writing about what bubbles through my brain-jelly. A boulevardier is a French term for one who saunters up and down the avenues of Paris or some other big city. If they weren’t so […]

Being a Little Unsure

Although I am bold enough to spout off on this blog, let’s be clear that I make no claims to being ultimately right. Often there is a varying degree of uncertainty. What brought this to mind is that I value a degree of intellectual humility. Not so much as to inhibit self-expression, but not so […]

Being Apophatic

According to the online free dictionary, apophatic is defined as “of or relating to the belief that God can be known to humans only in terms of what He is not (such as `God is unknowable’). I take it as a confession that puny human brains can never know, and I hold to this. I […]

Being Introduced

Picture this scene: You are to be a speaker or presenter at some event  and you may or may not be introduced in a way that does justice to you or the subject you’re speaking about.  This has happened to me innumerable times as I’ve spoken at a wide variety of lectures, workshops, symposia, etc. […]

Bibliophilia

I am a bibliophiliac, a mild addict, not so much in the sense of seeking collections per se, but really interested in what the books say in certain fields. This New Yorker cover describes my living room, not to speak of several other rooms with many bookcases. I realized that not many people have this […]

Blahg For the Great-Grandchildren

Your Grandpa, my son, reminded me that I’m writing this for you! My true identity as AB is not Adam Blatner—that’s just my “Earth” name. Really its “Amazing Brains!” Adam is just my cover, just this guy. Part of the time in the role of Adam  do dishes, enjoy my kids and grandkids, be a […]

Born to Sing

A wonderful early evening walk in Springtime around the neighborhood, a nice opportunity to work out a bit with my hand-held dumbbells, chat with my dearest Allee,  and delight in the “Shiva” thin crescent moon she pointed out. Then there was the song of my totem animal, the mockingbird (mimus polyglottos) in a passing tree.  […]

Both Sides Now

I heard a song back in 1968 or thereabouts, with that title and have enjoyed singing it—it’s by Joni Mitchell,  written in 1967, re-sung by Judy Collins the next year or so. It begins, singing about clouds, “Bows and flows of angel’s hair…”  I was just writing to a friend back where I used to […]

Brahma-Hurta: Spirit of Mid-Night Inspiration

Some of these musings emerge from mid-sleep—a time in the South Asian yogic tradition called “brahma-hurta” (I think that’s how it’s spelled)—when awakening between dreams, at 2 -4 in the morning, certain ideas intrude and begin to elaborate on each other, building an impulse to get up and write. It’s a mixture of inspiration and […]

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