Obey My Blog

South By Southwest is here! Woohoo!

What does this have to do with Tai Chi?

Nothing!

Other than the fact that, since I am not attending on the company’s dollar this year, I can attend any panel I choose. And in order to create a better blog for you, my dear readers, I choose to attend A LOT of panels. On blogging! Yay!

On that note, if you have any feedback regarding this blog, please feel free to send me a message via my Contact Form. I welcome constructive criticism, as well as, nice thoughts.

Just try not to be mean, if you can. An irate man tailgated me halfway home from a morning sit at the Zen Center a few Saturdays ago. I laughed. Likewise, if you are mean, I may very well laugh at you, too.

So I’ll be getting my geek on starting this weekend, but NEXT weekend I am attending a workshop with Grand Master Chen Qing Zhou.

This guy is going to kick. my. ass. And I’m very much looking forward to it.

Chen Qing Zhou apparently began teaching within a year of learning Lao Jia Li Yu – the Old Form. The form that I am learning right now.

I have just learned the 34th form, Double Jump Kick (Ti Er Qi).

How am I EVER going to make it to the 75th? I think I’m going to have to wake up a lot earlier in the mornings…

I think back to when I first started learning Tai Chi and I shake my head. There is NO WAY I would have been able to teach back then! I don’t think I could teach now! Well, okay, I could probably, maybe teach some Silk Reeling, but there is so much more that I don’t know…

Over lunch this past weekend, I described to a friend of mine how I started off doing Tai Chi to help me deal with stress. Then I mentioned how I went to an (awesome) acupuncturist for a year, also because of stress. And then of course, I got into Zen. Also, in a way, to help me deal with stress (and for other reasons too, but it has definitely helped me deal with stress, that’s for sure).

Hmmm…so apparently – and this may have been obvious to everyone but me – I’ve been one stressed out chica!

(to my former roommates back in Virginia…I’m so, so sorry…)

And now for a riveting video from the Grand Master himself. Who makes these videos? I need to have a talk with them about music selection…

Last weekend I drove by the IRS building that Mr. Joseph Stack flew his plane into on Thursday, February 18. I was driving to the grocery store Sunday afternoon before Tai Chi class like I always do. I happened to look over and there it was with all of its broken windows and mangled building materials dangling from each of the floors. It was eerie in its ordinariness.

The night of that incident, here in North Austin, I watched The Bridge.

If you haven’t seen The Bridge, it is a film that documents a handful of people who chose to end their lives by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004.

Needless to say, it was not easy to watch.

But over and over, as these individuals’ stories unfolded, I realized that all of them had particular expectations for who they thought they should be. And they were tortured by them. Some were suffering from mental illness, but the others almost obsessively compared themselves to ideals they had created in their minds about who they thought they were supposed to be.

And they simply couldn’t live with the fact that they didn’t meet those ideals and expectations.

Nearly six years ago, I almost couldn’t live with mine either.

Standing on the edge of the metro platform in Washington, DC, waiting for the next train, I looked down and marveled at how easy it would be to just jump in front of it. I was alone and completely lost in a soul-sucking temp job as an assistant at an investment bank. I could barely afford rent and food and though I wouldn’t admit it, I was still reeling from the bitter and painful divorce of my parents only a few years before. It was probably the lowest I’d ever been.

But I still couldn’t do it. I looked up and saw the headlights of the train beaming right at me and I became frightened. I didn’t want to die. Even in that much pain.

So when I learn about people who actually do go through with killing themselves I can only imagine their despair.

I see a very thin, but often times, very elusive, line between expectations and reality. On this line hangs a question – what if the people who ended their lives on the bridge just didn’t compare themselves to an ideal? What if they were just able to tell their expectations to piss off? What then? Could they have turned around and faced the road back into San Francisco, rather than face jumping into the water?

What are these expectations really and why do we let them dictate how we live? So what if we’re not rich by the time we’re 40. So what if we never sculpted the perfect career for ourselves (what is that anyway?). So what if we never got married or never had children. So what if we got divorced. So what if we went broke.

I challenge these expectations. They rob us of our humanity. They separate us from each other. How is that living?

In the most ordinary sense, on the most ordinary day, a man decided to fly his plane into a building in North Austin because the world didn’t meet his expectations.

His only solution?

Violence and death.

I challenge that.

Back in April was World Tai Chi and Qigong Day. I didn’t go. I kind of like to sleep in on Saturdays… But some of my classmates went to the celebration here in Austin and said it was great. There was one comment made though that disturbed me. Someone mentioned that to them, it looked like the Asian martial artists that were present just naturally performed the movements better than anyone else (actually, the word Oriental was used, but I won’t go into that here…).

Wait, what was that? Did I hear that correctly?

I’d like to take a moment and say that the martial arts are not a part of the genetic make-up of the Asian population (which is a hugely broad term anyway!), no more than cowboy boots are a part of the genetic make-up of Texans (I have never worn a pair of cowboy boots. Nor have I ever owned any. And no, I did not ride a horse to school every day! Although, that would have been kinda cool…). You only become good at martial arts by practicing. A LOT. Some people have been practicing since they were kids, like this young feller, so “naturally” it would make sense if they were better than others who, like myself, have only been practicing for little over a year.

So enough with the “Asians are better at martial arts” thing. It’s just not true. You know when someone is practicing a movement correctly. You can see it. And it is not dependent on if they are Asian or not.

My company is big on volunteering, so every year we have a day dedicated to going out into the community and volunteering our time. Last year I worked with Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, which was awesome. This year, several of my coworkers and I volunteered with TAP – Theatre Action Project, which works with youngsters to encourage creative expression while learning life skills, building confidence and just having fun.

I was immediately taken in by all the bright colors, the paper-mâché parade dolls hanging from the ceilings, the marionettes and all the crayons and glue and stuff (glue is fun!). Our first task – make signs! So we did. I painted a nice, lovely arrow for them and then my coworker April worked her artistic magic on the others.

While we let the paint dry on our signs, we were given a second task – tie together paper cranes. The paper cranes were to be sent to Japan in honor of a young girl affected by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima named Sadako. Inspired by an old Japanese saying that a person who folded 1,000 cranes would be granted a wish, Sadako attempted to fold 1,000 paper cranes while sick in the hospital (or so the story goes). She fell short of her goal and passed away, but her schoolmates decided to complete the cranes for her and buried them all with her. Now kids from all over the world carry on this tradition and send their completed cranes to Japan in honor of Sadako. Kids from several different schools around Austin had created thousands of these colorful origami paper cranes too and they absolutely had to be strung together in strands of 50. So we got to work…

And they turned out beautifully! We managed to get them all strung together and ready to go. Our signs were finished and we even had time to help out with a few other tasks involving construction paper and glue (no rubber cement though unfortunately!).

This reminded me of volunteering in Costa Rica and helping the kids there make lanterns for the Independence Day parade. I’ve been saving money to do another volunteer trip abroad, but I’m having trouble deciding where to go again. My first thought was, India – absolutely! But then, after doing some math and then redoing the math again, I realized it was going to be near impossible for me to afford it. My sister recommended Thailand. I would love to visit Thailand, but the only affordable program is in Bangkok. I’m not sure I want to stay in Bangkok. I can handle big cities, but deep down I prefer smaller, less populated places (yes, I know…and I was considering India! So be it…). So now I’m actually considering going back to Costa Rica…

But now – time to go to Qigong!

I took my sister to a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant here in Austin not too long ago called Triumph Cafe. After happily slurping away at my noodle soup, I ended up buying a small book on incense. I love scents. Call it my Taurean nature or my mother’s near obsession with perfumes while I was growing up, but I love experiencing and learning about perfumes, candles, incense and the smell of food even. Anyway, this book, The Book of Incense, reveals the history of incense in Japan. I had no idea there were ceremonies surrounding the appreciation of incense – just like tea ceremonies. It is called Koh-do or The Way of Appreciating High-quality Incense.  There are even games that you can play to take your guests on a mental journey while they try to guess the correct ingredients of different types of incense.

Kyara incense

I don’t plan on performing an incense ceremony anytime soon. I simply enjoy the way they smell and the way they make my place feel like home, but I did come away from this book with a new appreciation, if you will, for incense. I would really love to know what good quality incense like this $600 packet of Kyara incense smells like, but I think I’d be too afraid to burn it at that price! Maybe if I ever go to Japan I’ll see about purchasing a small sample instead. Oh and touring the incense factory… Apparently the place where they make Shoyeido incense still resides on the exact same property where it began 300 years ago.

It occurred to me today that I need to register for the SXSW Interactive. I missed it last year, but I am determined to attend this year, damnit! I’m looking forward to immersing myself in UX and Interactive Design – woohoo! The only thing I would like to avoid is the social media. I know, I know – how could I say that?? I’m just burned out on it I tell ya. It’s awesome, yes indeed, but I need a break man.

As an Anthropology student many years ago, I was pretty sure my advisor thought I was nuts for wanting to minor in Photography. How awesome and strange that I have somehow managed to combine my love of art and technology with my interest in helping people (through my job at Convio). I always thought I had to choose between the two.

Speaking of Photography, I finally got all the old black and white photographs I took in my classes back from my Dad. I couldn’t believe my eyes – they were – hideous! How is it that time distorts our memories so well? I knew that the second portfolio I put together was hideous when I did it. My heart wasn’t in it and it definitely shows. But all of my other photographs I cherished and thought exuded real talent. Well, they don’t. Not really. There are actually a few good ones, but most are overexposed, underexposed or just plain uninteresting. But that’s okay. I learned a lot from those classes and it’s still all here in the ol noodle. Just today I was eyeing a shiny new Nikon digital SLR. The D90. Oh yeah… a nice little diddy in my price range. Sort of…