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.

I attended an informal talk a few months ago, where it was suggested that I encourage others to meditate. I raised my hand and immediately expressed my concern and unease with this.

I don’t talk about Zen stuff very often. Well, okay, in this blog I do, but that’s different. Much of the time though, in my daily life, I try to completely avoid talking about Zen Buddhism or Zen meditation altogether.

There are several reasons for this.

1. A lot of people think meditation is weird. I’m not really interested in trying to convince people otherwise. Even though it’s probably the simplest thing a person can do. In Soto Zen, it involves sitting and staring at a wall. But this still seems to weird some people out.

2. I get the impression that a lot of people already think I’m kind of weird.

3. Before last year, I thought Buddhism was really, really, really boring. Really. I absolutely had no interest in it whatsoever and could not relate to it at all. Knowing this, I do my best not to waste my time – or other people’s – jabbering on about Zen stuff. The people who are genuinely interested, ask. The people who aren’t, just get defensive anyway.

4. I am not a Buddhist. I’m not sure I want to be a Buddhist. And yet it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m “home” in a very long time. I don’t know how to reconcile that, but that’s okay. But with this in mind, I do my best not to preach.

5. There are already enough people jabbering on about Zen and Buddhism. People much more qualified at it than me. But then there are those who like to jabber on and on and on…about nothing! I’m a writer – maybe not a great writer, but a writer nonetheless  – and I love words. But Jesus Mary Mother of God, I don’t want to sit around and argue with some jackass with something to prove about the intricacies of the Vinaya. Snore! I have a life to live. So do other people.

Zen is such a strange, strange thing. And yet it’s so boringly normal. I don’t know how to express this experience to other people. I just have to live it. Or try to.

It is also very, very personal.

In my Zen class this week, my teacher asked us all why we come to the Zen Center.

The people who responded had really wonderful and touching replies.

I was not one of them.

I couldn’t answer. I knew if I opened my mouth to speak it would be waterworks all over the place.

So I bit my lip and made a joke instead.

Because I mean, how do I even begin to answer that question?

It’s unfathomable to me. Extremely personal. Absurd. Ridiculous. Serious. And yet, not serious at all.

I can’t even imagine not going to the Zen Center now. I can’t even imagine not meditating. How’s that for an answer?

p.s. Yes, I made up the word “jabbery.”

I am writing this as part of the The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Today’s topic: Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

I’m in a diner. It’s a crisp Sunday morning. I’m happily plowing through a plate of scrambled eggs when I look up and gaze dreamily out the window.

And then I see him. Outside.

My heart stops. All the blood in my body begins to coagulate into an enormous lump in my chest. Scrambled eggs dangle from the edge of my bottom lip.

I can’t believe he’s here. How could this happen?

I don’t understand.

“Wait!”

We’re standing next to my car. It’s getting late and he’s starting to walk away. I really like this guy and I really want to kiss him, but I’m not entirely sure he wants to kiss me.

So I trick him.

“Wait! You’ve got something…”

I point at his face.

He turns and walks towards me and when he least expects it, I quickly and clumsily plant a kiss right on his cheek, barely missing his eye.

I start laughing and run back to my car. He laughs too and then later asks when he can see me again. We make vague plans. I get excited.

And then nothing.

And then this.

This odd, strangely synchronous meeting in a diner weeks later. Not having heard a word from him. Nothing.

I’ve combed every molecule of self-doubt, but I have no answers. I don’t know what to say or do. I want to bolt. But he has since sat down in a booth with his friends. And I will have to walk right by him just to leave this place.

I take a deep breath and stand up. I start walking and look right at him. I don’t know what to expect. I can’t even imagine what words could possibly be exchanged. Where would I even start? How in the hell am I even going to form words? Do I even remember how to speak English? Where am I anyway?

I reach the edge of his table and then…

Nothing.

He doesn’t even look up. Instead, his eyes are focused intently on the menu in front of him.

I should have just let it go at that. But, of course, this has been one of my biggest challenges of 2009. Letting things go.

I contacted him a few weeks later to ask him what happened. Apparently, because I like to torture myself. But also because I mean, I just wanted to know and in some weird way salvage what little friendship we had left.

You see, because of him, I started taking Tai Chi. I knew he had his own contemplative practice and it seemed to help him. So, I thought, I should try something too. Maybe it will help me. And it did. And I am sincerely grateful for that (well, that and for introducing me to Metalocalypse).

It pretty much ended there. But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was realizing that I had done almost this exact same thing to other people in my life. I myself had rejected people out of fear, disinterest or whatever. The realization was like getting hit in the face with a big karmic flapjack.

Oh my god, I thought. I’m that person!

No longer could I play the victim. No longer could I bathe in self-righteousness. Because I mean, how could I blame him? Really? Not to excuse his behavior, of course, but in a weird way, I kind of understood.

This didn’t ease the heartache or the cold, biting sting of rejection, but for the first time I saw things differently.

And I was humbled. And it was okay.

I was recently inspired to join the The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge upon discovering this wonderful blog, Pleasure Notes, by Emma James.

But alas, I know that my ridiculous schedule will not allow me to post every day (trust me, I would if I could). However, I decided to jump in on a few of these since I really wanted to share in this blogger lovefest.

So the topic for today, December 7th is, “Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can’t believe you didn’t know about until this year.”

And this is why I knew I had to post something.

Because there is no question in my mind which blog this title belongs to.

Stumbling upon Penelope Trunk’s blog was a spiritual experience. Clouds parted. Angels sang. The earth cracked open. Whenever I get squeamish about hitting the publish button on an article (which is almost every time I publish an article), I think about Penelope. You don’t post something like, How to Decide How Much to Reveal About Yourself and not have serious guts.

Seriously.

She says things that my INFJ self only dreams about saying. And thus, I am inspired all the more.

In my Tai Chi world this year,  I was absolutely delighted to see the revival of Real Taijiquan.

Mr. Smith’s blog was the first Tai Chi blog I came across when I first began my Tai Chi adventure almost two years ago and I continue to draw inspiration from his articles. Also, if it weren’t for him, I would have never known about Baguazhang and might never have worked up the nerve to actually take it (so, thank you!).

Okay, now YOU! Any fabulous blogs that you came across this year, that you’d like to share?

I bought fresh flowers the other day. I came home, carefully unwrapped the bouquet, cut the stems and arranged them in a clear, glass vase. I walked into the living room to set them down and admire their beauty when I realized I had no place to put them. There wasn’t a clean surface in sight! I tried setting them in the middle of the coffee table, but amongst the piles of discarded mail, the bottle of detergent (set out as a reminder for me to do laundry) and the crumbs from the previous night’s dinner, it just looked like one more item of clutter.

When the heck did I become such a slob?

And how could I not notice?!

People say that your home reflects your state of mind. Yeah… I don’t even want to think about what this implies about me. I used to be obsessed with cleaning. Obsessed I tell you! But nowadays I’m so busy I barely have time to wash dishes. Actually, I hardly even do that anymore. I pretty much live out of my dishwasher.

As annoyed as I am by that little saying, there is a bit of truth in it. I have been avoiding cleaning. I have been avoiding that pile of mail on the kitchen counter that threatens to topple over into the sink (I really do hate going through mail) and I have been avoiding the spiders and their cobwebs in my living room window sill (they eat the mosquitos! At least, that’s my excuse…).

Why?

Because it’s boring! And because I always think I should be doing something else more important. I should be reading, writing, practicing Tai Chi, meditating, eating butter – anything but cleaning.

Ay! But that’s just it. Cleaning is practice. It is just as important as my Tai Chi, my meditation, my writing and my strange obsession with finding bizarre Tai Chi videos on YouTube (like this one!).

This doesn’t mean I find it any less boring. But if I can’t even bring myself to clean and take care of my little apartment, then maybe that is a reflection of my state of mind. And if I’m in a state like that, what good am I in the dojo? In the meditation hall? Or at work even? Not that I have to be perfect, mind you (I don’t want to take it that far), but still…

I’m very keen on the idea that every day life is where it’s at – the real juice of life. I shun enlightenment experiences and spiritual practices that want to “take you away from all this” not because I have anything against these things, but because I’ve seen people use them as a way to try to escape their lives. To escape relationships. To escape conflict. There isn’t any escape – this is where it’s at. But if I’m avoiding the every day task of simply cleaning, isn’t that, um, kind of the same thing?

I finally did start cleaning. I unloaded the dishwasher. I cleaned off the coffee table and even removed the cobwebs from my living room window. It really wasn’t as time-consuming as I thought it would be. I even had some time left over to do a little reading. I also finally have a place to put my flowers!

Now if I can just do a little of this every day…

I recently learned that a friend and unrequited love of mine was heading off to study Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation. I would say I was deeply saddened but that sounds ridiculously cliche and hollow. In actuality, I am filled with a strange sense of deja vu and I wonder how this path will unfold for him.

When I was in High School I devoured new age and self-help books. I carried Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior around with  me everywhere, hoping one day, I too would meet a “Socrates” and find peace within. The closest I ever came was an English professor during my sophomore year of college who had a stutter and a rather icky way of hitting on me while couching his words in literature.

And then I discovered Carlos Castaneda. I read with awe as he explained that in order for one to be completely free, one would have to sever all relationships, especially with family. The idea was that family members and significant others limited one’s ability to reach the infinite. In the books by his female counterparts, they even go so far as to say that men leave energy “worms” inside a woman’s body after sex, persistently depleting them of life-energy even years afterwards.

Complete bullocks right?

I bought it hook, line and sinker. It wasn’t until years after studying Anthropology and a rather eye-opening conversation with a good friend, did I realize my serious error. I did an internet search (rudimentary in those days) and discovered the truth for myself. Carlos Castaneda was no disciple of some mysterious Yaqui shaman. He was a manipulative womanizer and polygamist and completely full of his own inner bullshit. I was mortified, embarrassed, and humiliated. I had basically bought into a cult!

Granted, it could have been worse. I was only reading his books. I didn’t actually fly out to Los Angeles to follow him. But I wanted to. And that thought still kind of disturbs me. But I’m glad it disturbs me. It makes me question even the most seemingly mundane assumptions about life. Since then I’ve continued to turn to religion and other new age books for answers, but none of them have ever been able to fulfill my insatiable hunger for what I really want to know – myself.

Which is why I worry about my friend. Maybe he’ll be fine. Who knows. I certainly don’t. I’ll send him off with the most honest prayer I can possibly give him – may he find bittersweet disillusionment and in so doing, himself.

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!

No, no, no. No more talk of unconditional love. No more pontificating on the meaning of life. No more talking. I just want to do Qigong. In class this past week I felt disconnected and aloof. Not like me at all (well, in class anyway). A couple of students started chatting about how it’s possible to pick up negative energy from someone else and carry it with you. Our teacher started talking about all the exotic places he would be visiting this summer. At the end of class, everyone gathered around him to hear his words on why cultivating unconditional love and happiness are important to your health and the quality of your life. All of this seemed to run together and turn into something like a pop song I’ve heard on the radio a thousand times. I like the song, but I’ve heard it so many times that it’s starting to lose its original meaning for me. I really wanted to go back to the time before when it was fresh, new and made me want to sing along.

I didn’t really feel like singing along this time and a part of me kind of felt guilty for that. At the same time, I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling just a bit disillusioned with my practice. Well, actually it’s not my practice really. On that I am clear. I love practicing Qigong and I love practicing Tai Chi. It’s when philosophical underpinnings get tacked onto my practice that I start squirming.

On the other hand, I think these philosophical underpinnings are very important. I absolutely agree with my teacher that cultivating unconditional love and happiness are important to creating health and improving your quality of life. I think more people should consider this. Especially the employees of the Ruzyne International Airport in Prague (if you’ve never experienced customer service in a former Communist country, I highly recommend it.). However, in the context of this class, it feels strange to me. Even though that’s what initially attracted me to the class. Absurd!

I guess it goes back to my resistance to teachers in general. I have believed in philosophies and people who I discovered later on were completely full of crap. Needless to say, it’s a very disillusioning experience to find that everything you believed in wholeheartedly and passionately was in reality a complete fabrication. It’s made me just a wee bit gun-shy (is that the word I’m looking for? I don’t know.).

I have no solution here by the way. I’ll just keep on practicing. Because I love it. And I’ll keep on questioning my teacher, while (hopefully) remaining humble and open to learning. It’s a weird compromise, but the only one that satisfies me at the moment.

I just started reading, Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury and was just about knocked over by the preface – the preface! The thing that no one ever reads!

He asks,

“How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?”

I can’t argue with that. Reading those words, it’s very obvious to me that, despite my best intentions, I’ve been hiding – in my writing, in my Qigong practice and in my relationships. I’ve been afraid to really put my heart into something I care about. Oh I try…but trying is not the same as putting your whole heart into it, or telling yourself, fear be damned, I’m going for it.

In my search for peace and a sense of balance, I have to wonder, have I just been looking for a way not to feel? In pursuing Qigong, am I kidding myself that I am really facing my fears or am I just looking for a way to outrun them, so that I can enjoy a few moments of tingly feel-goodness? I like to think that I am facing my fears, because there is something about slowing down that makes you reflect on things you might not otherwise get around to fully acknowledging. However, I do feel that a part of me wishes that I could stay within that inbetween place, where you are not happy, sad, angry or disillusioned, because in that space you do not risk anything. But that is the most unfortunate of places.

When it comes down to it, Qigong – and writing for that matter – make me feel alive. Perhaps I should fully embrace that, rather than go through each movement and each word with hesitation and the fear of truly revealing myself.