Find the balance.

Hello again! New York is enjoying a change in weather. Hopefully you’re getting out an’ about, smelling the roses and all that. 

Let’s mix it up…

Beats:

I can’t stop listening to Elvis Presley’s last performance of Unchained Melody. In this video there are some heartbreaking moments when he stumbles over his words while joking with the audience, but once he starts singing…It’s an incredible powerhouse performance. I cried. 

Barbells:

Let’s talk barbells. They are pretty versatile, especially when you start doing unilateral training. I am especially fond of landmine exercises. If you don’t have access to this piece of equipment, you  can create your own. I use a thick pair of sweatpants as a buffer against the wall to prevent damage. Check out the press and the squat. It’s a great challenge for the core and the primary movers. Eric Cressey and Ben Bruno offer helpful cues for doing it right. 

Books:

Up first, Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time by journalist Richard Conninff was an entertaining and philosophical look at animal interactions and the humans who observe them. At one point in the narration, Conniff quotes primatologist Frans de Waal who offers this insight, “Instead of being tied to how we are unlike any animal, human identity should be built around how we are animals that have taken certain capacities farther.” To me, this is a critical point. Humans tend to romanticize our race, believing that we are the ultimate beings, that we are superior in some way. This stance removes us from the community of creatures and tilts our roles to owners—as opposed to members who need to contribute and take responsibility for participating and elevating our little niche. I am reminded of a Jewish wisdom; God asks, “What have you added to My universe that an insect hasn’t already done?” It is humbling to think that we, too, are part of the whole. We are not exempt from the rules governing the world and all of God’s creatures.

With that, I lead into The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi. I added this book to my *must read* list a few years ago. In an interview, illusionist David Blaine mentioned that Levi was one of his favorite writers. The performer even tattooed Levi’s Auschwitz number on his forearm, and so I was determined to read Primo Levi’s work. The Drowned and the Saved was a recounting of circumstances and psychology, a reckoning of the Holocaust. I annotated nearly every page. What I offer here is this; due to the incomprehensible tragedies, the impossible reality of the concentration camps, everyone’s “moral yardstick had changed…[They] were confined to the present moment.” Nothing existed beyond that present moment of survival. And so, “The ‘saved’ of [Auschwitz] were not the best…The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died.”

Peace and love, 

Kit