Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
My Favorite Things
Scriptology: Further Considerations
The last few weeks I’ve been caught up in other projects and I realized I hadn’t been posting much. One of my projects soon to be posted on my website is a lecture series with many illustrations about scriptology—the lore of alphabets and writing systems. My point, summarizing, is that the field represents a truly […]
Shifting Identities
In addition to my major profession “occupation” as a retired psychiatrist and visiting assistant professor, which I’m really not anymore since moving to the mid-California coastal town of San Luis Obispo—and becoming not-more every day—, I am presently editing a book about non-psychotherapeutic applications of Moreno’s methods. In addition, I’m editing and preparing to publish […]
Shree Yantra Doodle
I just doodled this quickly and scrawled some “writing” underneath it: This illustrates the nature of unconscious inspiration: I have no conscious idea what it says, yet I only doubt slightly that it says something. Perhaps it says that one can playfully open one’s mind and wonderful things enter it. That’s how Mozart did it.
Shree Yantra Live
In our world/ realm / dimension (says Zordak, my little green friend who visits me in his lil’ flying saucer thingey-o) we also have the diagram called the “Sri Yantra” as shown here: In our world it’s far more organic, slightly fluctuating, generating ever-new internal patterns. On your planet (at least in India and parts […]
Sing! Sing a Song!
I love the words from that Sesame Street song that includes the phrase, “Don’t matter if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear.” I’m interested in helping more people enjoy the arts—not just by witnessing, seeing, listening, but by doing, drawing, doodling, improvising, singing, drumming, dancing. I guess this might be a form […]
Singin’ for the Fun of It (Songbook)
I write about the joys and values of singing on another webpage on this website. Here are some of my favorite songs. This will make a nice little song sheet for get-togethers. Table of Contents Accentuate the Positive Amazing Grace Ballin’ the Jack Blowin’ in the Wind Don’t Fence Me In Enjoy Yourself Feelin’ Groovy […]
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Lewis Carroll wrote two books in the mid-late 19th century, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass. (Lewis Carroll was his pen name; his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Interestingly, a number of authors have had what’s called a nom de plume, a pen name.) Disney conflated those tw0 “Alice” […]
Song n Dance
I heard a performer sing old popular and Broadway songs a couple days ago, and knew some of them. It reminded me that I may not have shared that part of my life—that I made up song books, held song fests, sang songs for our Sun City Follies when we lived in Texas, programmed song […]
Sorta-Kinda 4th of July
On the planet I come from—just kidding, for those who get uncomfortable in the presence of insanity—they have an equivalent holiday for Independence Day. Everyone gets together and instead of shooting fireworks, they collectively bud fleezels, mandala-like protuberance-studded cartwheels. Fun, if you like that sort of thing. Meanwhile, the “flag” (so to speak) stands at […]
Surgical Instruments
One of the ironies of my life is that although I ended up in psychiatry, as a kid I wanted to be a surgeon. I had no idea what was involved. But since I needed surgery (as a kid—and in pretty much cured me), this lovely article in LIFE magazine on February 11, 1946 was […]
Surrealism’s Relevance
Creativity is our new meme—the theme that is relevant for our time. The surrealistic artists anticipated this by a century, but so much creativity has characterized the many “inventions” of the 20th and beginning 21st century that it’s time we became aware that, as the philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev said (in Rissian), “Be creative, and foster […]
The “Physiology” of the Ultimate
Not that I have a clue, but yet, yes, some hints. The following mandala expresses this intermixing of order and disorder, structure and chaos. The cosmos celebrates spontaneity and diversification. It mixes DNA in a profligate fashion. (What a great word, “profligate.”) This intrinsic, organic reality needs to become a core part of a more […]
The Communi-cube as Oracle
My friend John Casson in England created an instrument to get people communi-cating: The communicube. They communicate more articulately to themselves. You can see it on his website. My wife has used it in her spirituality group to get the small number of people involved to reflect more on their lives. She’s used it several […]
The Dynamics of Dancing
I was wondering recently at the way my engaging in a session of dancing—either square dancing or folk dancing—can so lift my overall psychosomatic energy level. After a while of warming-up, what may have felt “tired,” “dragging,” “low key” disappears and I feel delighted, lighter, happier, more vital. What was it about dancing?! Then I […]
The Impossible Dream
I was singing this song to myself, from the Broadway play of the 1960s, Man of La Mancha—, revealing my private dreams of grandiosity. These betray the mind’s capacity to think in terms of superlatives. Each is paradoxical, a way of dramatizing ambition, such as dreaming an impossible dream or fighting an unbeatable foe. They […]
The Influence of Abner Dean
I was strangely influenced as a young man by the surrealistic, semi-cartoon art of Abner Dean, who drew cartoons and pictures that intrigued me. I had been into comic books, but here was a fellow who, like Saul Steinberg, used cartooning to present serious themes. Recently, I remembered Dean and wondered why I was fascinated […]
The World is So Full
“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”—so said Robert Louis Stephenson. And some wag wrote in another sense, what I perceive to be a related poem: “Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em; and little fleas have littler […]
The World of Almost-Real: Some Introductory Notes
It’s less important that you believe this version of meta-reality than you be liberated by this example: Fairly mature people (like the author) can engage in what the psychoanalysts call “adaptive regression in the service of the ego” (or ARISE for short) and use this activity as a way to open their minds for fun […]
Vicissitudes of Cultural History
Forty years later a culture blossoming may become re-interpreted popularly in ways that are very different from the currents involved at the time of that phenomenon. I was on the outskirts of the hippie revolution in San Francisco in the late 1960s, for example. The other night our group had a hippie-theme square dance, though […]
What Keeps Me Going:
First thing is singing, often an improvised marching tune, or anything. It might be a simple note that I begin to vary and watch what begins to come. The notes are then amplified into a basic tune. Be-boo-bop, no particular words. Occasionally I might insert the words to a spiritual chant, such as Om Namah […]
What’s Up With Me Lately
During this October, 2010, I’ve been working on preparing and giving lectures on Lesser-Known Aspects of the Renaissance, to be posted in a few weeks (I hope) on my website—lots of pictures—this for the Senior University Georgetown Fall Program. Beginning to prepare also for the early Spring (February) program next year on the Lore of […]
Who Am I?
I have a very diversified portfolio of roles. I’m thinking of reorganizing my website to reflect this, because there is a gradual decline in the degrees of investment of time and energy given to the more professional roles and a gradual increase in the levels of activity in more playful and life-savoring roles. At present […]
Winding Down, Wrapping Up (2)
Here I am, happy, as usual, finally, loved by my wifey-p0oh, quite content, realiz-ing that if I were the emperor of all I survey—a childish dream residue— it would be comparatively worrisome! This simple un-worried life is as good as it gets, and it’s quite fine indeed. Having more means worrying more, because there are […]
Winter’s Day
It’s Texas here, and it’s been nicely warm for a few days, and now we’ve been having a freezing cold front come through and we get those times too in Winter. In another corner of my cluttered mind I found the cartoon below and it reminded me how much I enjoyed Charles Addams’ cartoons in […]
Wowsy Woozy!!
This is one of the mantras expressing the sentiment of wonder, of astonishmentality, a lovely state of mind that comes from opening the soul-pupils a little bit, opening to the amazing-mentay (i.e., super-amazing), fabulosity (i.e., super-fabulous nature) of the Everything (i.e., an inconceivable inclusiveness). Indeed, wowsie woozy is an appropriate exclamation for just about anything […]