Tai Chi: John's 39th Year
In 1982, the classes with Susanna brought me to a world of acknowledging that flowing with the current could be more logical than any set plans . It was as simple as remembering and recording what I thought had happened those times at Mercer County College when I would listen, watch, imitate, and devour the lessons Susanna passed along from her teacher Master Jou.
So now I’m back on the small plaza in the shade at 8 in the morning, a Saturday with cicadas screaming choruses of warnings and compulsion to only themselves. I walk back to the parking lot after Susanna sends a text that she’ll be here soon. A blonde in yoga clothes has her back to me as she gets equipment from the van. It’s Susanna after more than a year of not seeing each other. Hugs now with body language conveying the connection as clearly as the sunlight cascading through the leaves. The student with her, a gray-haired, willowy raisin, smiles and greets me, the high-school friend, still here, going nowhere and everywhere.
The students begin to come, all raisins, ready to follow the teacher. Susanna introduces me and asks if I’d be willing to read the Colorado White River piece. Sure, I say, but I know that it’ll be best if they look at it (or not) on their own. NO forcing. Nothing is the most.
The class begins with Susanna turning her torso, rolling the center, letting the energy come out. Then, the elbows rise up and point way skyward, then to the side, the silk reeling with each arm that traces yinyang with limbs needing opening. Then, the toe stand with the turning in another silk reeling twist.
As I write this, the fog of my mind that morning revisits me. But mostly, the overwhelming feeling that the flow of years continues here in this Princeton meadow where the people with us are part of the moment that never ends, only changing form and place and time. The ecstasy is in me as it always is. And I wonder if any of the vibrations are palpable for the other feet sinkers, the dancers, around me.
Susanna takes out the slinky and works its snake slither back and forth, the embodiment of the weight shifts as the arms and legs channel the energy up and down, in and out, always moving. The energy can either go out only, or it can come in and nourish the power that already waits in us. It’s blocked in lives that impose order and agency on what nature asks of us – to be silent and loud, strong and weak, pressing and yielding.
As I write, the inadequacy of memory and my attempt at words makes me smile, never with frustration, but with joy that I’m ready to put all this down on paper, here at the library computer, as I know that most likely I’ll remember almost nothing of what I write.
And the timer on the computer lets me know that only 10 minutes remain for this. So the two classes-=- here at the bare beginning of the first one – won’t even make it to the paper unless the shorthand gets shorter.
The forms that Susanna leads for a moment and that other students take over have the snake creep down and the guitar playing and the repulsing monkey. But the beauty of hearing Susanna correcting and commenting and urging and praising her students as they let their muscles and minds do the move reminds me of how much I miss her brilliant stream of observations about Master Jou’s refusal to speak English when talking of matters not Tai Chi.
She shows us an outdated Tai Chi book that doesn’t illustrate the proper bubbling springs energy source that she didn’t know about and , now knowing it, left her almost crippled after teaching a few hours of classes. They knew less then, and they still need to learn more, but the insights continue to grow.
For now, I’ll stop, a beginning somewhere that will never end.
My Tai Chi experience in Colorado at a stream in White River National Park , Colorado, just outside of Montezuma, the mountain ghost town where visitors got the message to stay away, Covid still on everyone’s minds there.
The stream leaves a tiny island a few feet wide and long.
I step onto it. The rippling, rushing, flowing drumming of the water runs down the slight slope as I begin the 24 for the old and the elderly, a beautiful pleonasm. The cool air raises my arms as I commence, then turn left, the weight shifting as the first wild horse’s mane gets parted. The swift brook, only inches deep, laughs as it bubbles past , the sunlight warming and lighting this mountain pass and the white capped mountains above. Everything has a name, but nature calls out quietly that the labels mean nothing.
Now, the white crane spreads its wings, the breeze and water singing to me. Flowing with gravity, the melting voyage continues down the mountain as I don’t take the same empty steps again.
Three brush knees, aloshi abu, each move rocking back and for the like a waltz step ready to lead the empty partner on to the next moment . ,
Stepping back to play the lute -- the guitar Susanna would call it. Circling up to the left and holding the ball, I feel the yinyang connection, here swiveling through the middle of my body, like a tree trunk ready to move with the hands, the trunk showing the way for the hands and feet and arms to take root and to float .
The monkey waits for me to repulse her, so four knife hands pass, with back steps that flow with the arms and legs yinyang motion letting the balance of nature take me gently to a place to begin again.
Here in the library, thinkng about how the form happens, what it felt like in the Rockies, has me doing not Tai Chi, not relaxing, but writing in a comically inadequate way to recreate the moments of motion,, the sound of the water around me, the soft movement of clouds in the sky.
The sparrow’s tail, grasped in the sun as I hold the ball that Kazi would have me see. I’m alone with the sound of the breeze and the water like an opera whose words don’t matter. Only the feeling of the sound lifting the scent of pine trees and clean air, pulsing around and through my body
Air at 12.000 feet comes easily into my mind and lungs.
Writing this in the Milburn library , the deserted temple now more open, but still, empty, I float back to the sound of the water, the soft pebbles under my feet on the tiny island, and most of all the sound of
the water. My eyes bring the magick of the snow melting and the hawks flying. Here, the air conditioning unit breathes like a techno-helper trying to be nothing but a cooling system . But this is created by the energy burn of fossil fuels warming the planet . The mountain does its dance with no help necessary.
Take me to this place when I’m in Wordsworth’s bliss of solitude.
Relaxing to survive, now, as a deep breath pulses out from my center and the silence here lets me travel back to the afternoon sunshine
The single whip raises my arms as I turn to face the mountain top, shifting weight as my cloud hands pass before me,, now in the direction that the water comes from down the mountain.
The three cloud hands float with fingers curved in palm cradles, my eyes following the stream in the air before me.
The single whip is the picture frame for the cloud hands, and the move to high pat on horse, what sounds like gold hammer, has the statue of liberty football play opening my arms in acceptance of the day’s perfect weather embracing us all.
Phyllis takes pictures of the mountain, Daniel videos me. And Anna is somewhere. But I don’t think about them. Alone with the form in the mountain air, breathing in the Tao around me.
The leg kick to the right happens as I anchor gently to the ground, the pebbles that let me stand dry among the fluid stream.
As I write this the timer tells me that only 11 minutes of the 45 I started with remain. Library constriction and discipline here.
The ears I box to the right lead me into the turn for another leg kick to the left.
Back to the right for the flamingo standing on one world, and the makick of connection happens as I see Anna , following me, lifting her leg flamingo style. Daniel videos this, evidence of the magick planting itself where it belongs.
Relaxing to survive ,Anna joins the Tao.
Pushing up in two directions, diving to the bottom of the sea, back blocking, turning and punching, withdrawing, and finishing the form, I feel the perfect balance flow.
This version of what happened on the mountain in Colorado, cut short perfectly as the library computer says it’s time.
John Playing Tai Chi in White River National Park