morning thoughts on form, and The Form (art and T’ai chi) and the WSEA Water taxi!

This misty grey morning, as I peer out at Elliott Bay and think about the voyage ahead–down the hill in the rain, onto the water taxi and across the bay, up through Pioneer Square to Chinatown where I’ll do T’ai chi at the Seattle Kung Fu Club studio, I feel energized and serene. Reading Peter Ralston lately has been inspiring, and to practice T’ai chi and make quilts at the same time seems somehow philosophically coherent.

As Ralston writes in Principles of Effortless Power, “Only the ‘form’ survives of anything created and then passed on in time, since creativity resides within what is formless and this formlessness cannot survive, having never existed. Therefore, only when the form is being consciously created in this moment is it truly useful and representative of its origin” (xx).

The form, message, and feel of a quilt become visible over time, as seen in the photos below, dated 11/20/21 and 11/26/21. Once created, it is. You can feel it with your hands and face, snuggle under its warmth, enjoy its bright colors and patterns. It may fade if left in the sun, or be stained by some accident, yet a quilt will usually survive a pretty long time.

The Form we practice in T’ai chi comes to life in time as well. Yet once created, it is gone, until next time.

So far, I’ve learned about 20 minutes of the Wu Form. When I practice, I feel like I’m inhabiting a timeless realm where themes and refrains repeat through space, spiraling and stepping to some unknown beat. Can’t wait for class!

P.S. These photos of the water taxi and Chinatown are from July 2018, when we had just moved here. They do not represent the world as it looks today, on 11/27/2021. the fog hangs heavy over the water this morning… making the world just a little more quiet.

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respectfully yours (and homage to Yayoi Kusama)

Respect quilt no. 1 has rolled out of production as you see below!

If there is one lesson this work is teaching me, it is to focus on the center. Start at the center. Get the center right and the rest falls into place gracefully. It holds for stitching up a quilt as well as standing on one leg in a crane pose during T’ai chi.

As legendary martial artist Peter Ralston reminds us, “Centering is perhaps the best way to calm our thoughts and emotions. Putting attention and feeling in the center region of the body allows for a shift to a state of being that is calm, nonthinking but aware, balanced, in-the-body, grounded, present, and alive. It coordinates and harmonizes all movement in the body. Every action and movement is done with more power and control when directed from the center.” (The Principles of Effortless Power, p. 10).

In design, the center draws in the eye and creates a feeling for the whole. Yayoi Kusama understands that so well! Her Infinity Rooms are none other than spherical objects–with an invitingly open door. When people go inside, they are thus engulfed in the aesthetic, caressed by its special air and light, the weirdly round architecture giving us an unforgettable memory of coziness and wonder.

In fabric, things work a little differently, though I certainly hope people will one day wrap themselves in my Respect quilts!

The message is straightforward, if told through abstract shapes: in no. 1 (on the left below), the central red and black squares resemble the African continent (top) and a couple of ships bobbing at sea (bottom). They remind us of the slave trade, life’s vicissitudes, and the urgency of action. In Respect quilt no. 2, the central red and black squares resemble a curvy female form (top) and people talking or embracing under a blazing sun (bottom). They memorialize women’s vitality and community-building powers. None of this was premeditated; the images just came to shape when I unrolled that tantalizing package of African fabrics from Cultured Expressions: it’s magic!

day 42: T’ai chi to the rescue, again

Watching my moods darken over the past week or so, and feeling my shoulders tense and back ache from the constant face mask production, it suddenly (duh) hit me: I had stopped exercising and doing T’ai chi for a few days, and was re-entering my old way of being, focused entirely on work work work, and worries about what other people think or do. Ugh.

So I started again, and yesterday was day two of my once-habitual 90-minute workout (a series of core stretches followed by the Form, now practiced on the deck in my backyard, surrounded by hummingbirds and a friendly big dog who keeps bringing squeaky toys for me to throw, while I stand on one leg and smile).

what a difference!  Now, I hate all that cheerful blather about exercise as much as you do, so I’ll not belabor the point. I’ll just mention one tip from a favorite book: “it is imperative we keep our attention on the feet, legs, and pelvis, and use the force of gravity to source and manipulate our movement.”  (Ralston, Principles of Effortless Power, p. 15).

That’s what doing T’ai chi does for me: lowers the center of gravity, tightens the core, and pushes away non-essential thoughts… what remains is only love, and lots of it.

Here’s wishing you a day of effortless power too!

And here is yesterday’s face mask production, fyi:

 

avoiding eye contact for mental health and energy

This title sounds strange, yes. But I was moved to write in defense of deference by two things: 1) my recent experience doing T’ai chi at the Seattle Kung Fu Club; and 2) an article in the New York Times, “How to Meet Autistic People Halfway”.

It has been a dream come true to discover the Seattle Kung Fu Club and to become a student of Sifu John S.S. Leong and Sijeh Paula.* The exercises are rigorous and hard; it is not really fun, let alone for 90 minutes. But in that room, surrounded by symbols telling the history of the art and a great sense of human dignity and discipline, you are inspired. Paradoxically, it is a place bursting with concentration where it is very difficult to concentrate. People on the Kung Fu side of the studio are loud, dramatic, and fascinating! People on the T’ai chi side of the studio are practically silent, but they move around in fluid and overlapping ways. You have to remain aware of what is going on so you don’t get in the way.

During these times, I think always of the Zen saying, “Just Don’t Wobble!” But it is hard, and avoiding eye contact is imperative for me, so I don’t wobble and fall down off the one leg where I’m standing with knee outstretched,  or tip over from a stretched-out stance near the floor. When I read yesterday’s article which explains how autistic people use similar avoidance strategies, a faint insight emerged.

People engaged in the intense mental effort of T’ai chi, which requires extremely precise actions executed slowly, are accustomed to avoid eye contact with each other. I guess the eyes are too powerful a force of …   what exactly? Energy? emotion? intention? impenetrability? All I know is that looking into someone’s eyes can make you lose your balance and wobble. No need to apologize. We just don’t do it.

Similarly, perhaps, autistic people must work really hard to stay focused and mentally balanced. It is curious to learn how they articulate and express the reasons why they avoid other people’s eyes. In the New York Times article, psychologists Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar write, “Take eye contact. Some autistic people say they find sustained eye contact uncomfortable or even painful. Others report that it’s hard to concentrate on what someone is saying while simultaneously looking at them. In other words, not looking someone in the eye may indicate that an autistic person is trying very hard to participate in the conversation at hand. Unfortunately, this attempt to engage often gets interpreted as a lack of interest.”**

Martial artist Peter Ralston explains the psycho-physical dynamic going on in eye contact avoidance. For him, as a proponent of the inner arts, an inner focus is the key way to remain aligned with your center, grounded in the present. Since we are constantly in situation, we need to be flexible to sustain unity. “Keep a balance of awareness on all sides. Whenever we focus a lot of energy outward (energy extension), that flow should be balanced by centering and grounding our feeling-attention.”***

Along with Susan Cain’s feisty defense of introversion, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, which was a revelation and continues to be a source of sustenance to my gentle spirit, the work of Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar seems intriguing and worth pursuing too. We are all on a spectrum of some kind, as regards our social preferences and patterns of behavior. The more we realize and respect people whose ways of being are different from our own, the more peaceful our lives will become.

*Honorary terms for Teacher and Senior Student Teacher; on terms in T’ai chi, http://www.authentickungfu.com/seven_star/explanations.html

**Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar, “Opinion: How to Meet Autistic People Halfway,” New York Times July 13, 2018.

***Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, 97.

 

Ripping off the Bandaid, or must moving become existential turmoil? Remember the worry-wort centipede!

Now that it is only four weeks til D-day, I have felt touches of that sickness known as nostalgia. It starts with a slight taste of nausea that spreads to the temples with dread and then cloaks the whole body in heavy, dank sadness. I know it well, having lost my mom just three years ago and my dad in 2008.

I hate nostalgia! I hate thinking about the past, wallowing in sorrow for babies grown, marriages sealed, friendships ended. I hate thinking all the time. The Mind, it was revealed to me during the past 18 months since I discovered meditation and T’ai chi, is not necessarily a friend. It does not naturally have any compassion for you. It can attack you, remind you of weakness, and torture you all day long if you let it. Moving your household is an activity that gives Mind free rein, because when you must spend several hours a day poring through cupboards, drawers, and shelves, choosing and tossing vestiges of the past, Mind creeps in easily and emotional turmoil may ensue, believe me.

The conflicting emotions whipped up by the storm yesterday have subsided to mental nagging today. As Peter Ralston points out, “We have a tendency to get caught up in things that don’t serve being ‘in’ or being responsive to the present moment and condition—we become enmeshed in figuring out, being anxious, upset, angry, fearful, reactive and so on.”

His solution is a brilliant series of mind experiments and exercises designed to unify the physical core and the Mind. It does work if you remain calm. Being calm for me requires preparation: doing T’ai chi daily, concentrating on even breathing, and holding a correct spinal alignment at all times. As Ralston writes, “Instead of trying to make those things disappear, we can simply let them be, not feed them energy and attention, and let them float in the base we now call being calm” (Principles of Essential Power, 6). But when you suddenly rediscover a handknit baby blanket, a cute old photo of your kid (whose present self isn’t quite so cute or unproblematic), or even a yellowed bank statement, emotions are prone to fill the idle Mind.

Better to channel that emotional richness into creativity, as Bob Klein, Twyla Tharp and so many other sages have advised. Therein lies our life’s purpose. Creativity for me is writing (a little) and especially sewing. Sewing is a bond to the past and a disciplined way to beautify the present and make people happier, if only for a few minutes now and then. My intentions are kindly, the results are heart-warming, and that is enough for me.

But our world does not promote such simplicity, and it never has, as long as humans live in community and compare our fate to that of others. Faced with our own mortality and limitations, we humans can easily become off-balanced and fall into existential turmoil. French literature testifies to this fact all the time: just think of Victor Hugo’s poem, “The Slope of Reverie,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s works Being and Nothingness or Nausea, and Beckett’s entire absurdly depressing oeuvre.

Why is that? Because most people in the West are dominated by a tyrant named Mind or conscious logical socially-conditioned thought patterns. Mind tries (and often succeeds) to convince us that only Mind can keep us together.  Only worrying holds us upright, gets us out of bed and off to work. Only other people’s opinions of us count. If we stop worrying and trying to measure up to external standards, we will fall apart and turn into mush. That is a powerful lie. But each must realize it in his own time.

Remember the tragic fate of the worry-wort centipede!

The centipede was happy, quite,

Until a toad in fun

Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”

This worked his mind to such a pitch,

He lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run.

 

–reproduced in Watts, The Way of Zen, p. 27

 

image reproduced courtesy of Kaneki and a Centipede Plush ||| Tokyo Ghoul Fan Art by verticalforklift on Tumblr

day three: inaction in action

Another delightful paradox of preparing for a move: some days, all you need to do is to continue doing what you are doing. Nothing more is required.

As our agent wrote yesterday in response to last week’s house inspection, “So nothing to do now.”

This message reverberated with me deeply and made me feel very peaceful. I love it when someone tells me to do nothing!

(Now that I think of it, people have been trying to tell me this for some time: witness the black plastic wu-wei bracelet I’ve been wearing since a wise friend gave it to me back in February. Boy, can we humans be slow to catch on.)

It is all about responding appropriately to life’s events, instead of thrashing out blindly in fear and self-protection.

I read and pondered this while practicing today’s 30-minute standing meditation (part of the morning routine):

“The essence of the distinction between these two lies mostly in the quality and state of mind. If an action is free from fear and obsessive desire (and I do not mean free from feeling fear or having desire; I mean not bound to, motivated by, or influenced by them), and receptive to the real condition; and most importantly, if the mind and energy are not disturbed or disrupted in any way by the stimulus that calls for action; then it is responsive. Thus, if the stimulus does not call for action, no action is taken; whereas a reaction occurs whether action is called for or not.”

“Maintaining this condition of relaxed balance and postural integration is as delicate as it is effective.”*

If this all sounds too cerebral or abstract for you, try a living experiment instead. Stand up, put your feet together so that your heels touch, and bend your knees so they feel springy like in a jack-in-the-box. Put your feet at 90 degrees to each other, with your tail bone tucked under your spine. Feel your spine click into comfort. Hold that posture for a while.

(As per the advice of T’ai chi Master Peng, I do this while looking out a window every morning for 30 minutes. Although this is much less than the three hours he does each day, it has had miraculous effects on my balance, hip-joints, and all-around sense of well-being.)

As you stand, you will feel your balance shifting back and forth between your feet and legs. You will realize it is a continual movement that keeps you upright. You are always doing that thing; you are always staying upright! So give yourself some credit for that. Let your role in life slide into observing instead acting, when it is appropriate.

* Peter Ralston, Principles of Effortless Power, 48.

 

On health (and pharmaceuticals), calm, and joy’s return (no matter what he says)

Hi,

Well, this has been another tiring week, with much grading of papers and intensive course preparation as we begin the final stretch to the end of spring semester. (Three more weeks of ND and 76 days til SEA!) More showings of the house and cleaning loom on the horizon. An annual check-up I was looking forward to, since I’m feeling so good these days, became a startling event when an unexpected symptom was brought to my attention. Inspired by the recent New York Times article on anti-depressants by Benedict Carey and Robert Gebeloff, and my own desire to “get back to normal,” I had already convinced my doctor to slash my prescriptions so that instead of taking three pills a night (two typical “women’s pills” and one anti-depressant), I take one-half of one anti-depressant. Now I’m on a strict diet also and who knows how “withdrawal” from those medications will go? Grading and prepping took all my time, so that I did not even do the morning routine yesterday. Friends I’ve spoken to have revealed more scary health events—kidney, back, and eye problems. (Old people problems! Yikes what does that mean?) And my right hip has been hurting for the past two days, plus my sinuses were acting up. I was feeling old, apprehensive, and blah.

Those were my thoughts before the morning routine.

As I settled in, I picked up a book I love and read a passage about “Being Calm—The Presence of Being.” I’ve pasted it below for you.

Gazing out the window of the sunroom, with my heels touching and feet at 90 degree angles, my back straight and spine crackling nicely back into place, I let go of all that busy thinking and just looked. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds. A few cars drove by; no radios were blasting and there were no train whistles or sirens in the air. But there was so much bird activity! I saw cardinals, robins, sparrows, and a crow.

A bright red male cardinal made my heart soar with his beautiful song, but when I tried to take his picture, he hopped higher and higher up in the tree. See him way up on that dead branch?

Later, a female cardinal showed up in a bush nearby. Last thing I saw of them, they were flying rapidly around the neighbors’ yards, him behind her.  They were pretty to watch, fluttering up and down in currents of who knows what emotion or feelings. Whatever it was, it looked exciting and fun!  (or maybe not. Maybe he was over-aggressive or creepy, and she was trying to get away. Now I see him way up in that tree again, alone.)

Suddenly, a sparrow flew up and I realized that other forms of life were right at hand: they built a nest right outside the window!

When the 30 minutes were up, my hip still hurt a little (T’ai chi should fix that). As for my mind, it feels all better.

P.S.  On what happened next.  Inspired by the happy feelings, I decided to give away one of my  “Spring Yellow Plaid” Honey Girl pillows to a young man who does carpentry work for us—who was just in the hospital for a serious operation. Since Rich works most closely with the workmen here, I went downstairs to see him and tell him my idea.

He immediately looked down, shook his head, and said, “I don’t think so. He’s not the kind of guy… blablabla negative negative negative.” I smiled and said, “But Rich, have you seen the way he looks at Honey Girl? How he talks to her?  He calls her Woofie Girl. He made a cement plaque for her in the backyard…”

But he just shook his head, looked down, and went shuffling off to do the crossword puzzle. That is a typical exchange between us. It used to bug me a lot and could even drive me to despair and great loneliness. But as you can see on the “Happy Clients” page of my fledgling business, I have learned to take his advice with a grain of salt (or not at all)! Typically, when he tells me not to do something kind and generous, I do it anyway.

And so I just turned away, saying in a pleasant, non-angry voice, “Well that’s ok. You don’t have to be involved. It makes me happy, so I’m going to do it.”

And now I am smiling again, looking forward to another good day. As Rousseau once wrote, “You must be happy.”  And as a long-lost fortune cookie added: “Don’t stop now!”

 

The text from Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power pp. 5-6:

BEING CALM—THE PRESENCE OF BEING

Sometimes we experience what we call “being calm.” It is thought of as a state of mind in which all the activity of mind is clear, at ease, and undisturbed. How this comes about is usually unknown to us; however, it is conventionally attributed to “self-control” and so we take credit for it. When I speak of calming the activity that we call “mind,” it is not to support the manifold assumptions that exist as mind, but to point to a principle that appears in the presence of what we’re calling “calm.” Being calm appears when our internal activity is aligned with the principle for which this is so. This principle seems tied to the presence of being, in which the mere presence of being is allowed to be, regardless of how it appears. In this, being is experienced without preference or aversion, no matter the form. What is the principle in which this is the case?

When the activity that occurs as mind is distorted into a form in which that activity appears to be disturbed or unsettled, it is often rejected and held as something wrong, something to be avoided. This relationship to what is apparently already occurring immediately severs us from the activity itself, putting us in the position of “fixer” rather than one of simply being. This occurs the moment we first ascertain that we are not calm. From this position we are not in the best place to correct this malady, should we hold that it needs fixing, and so a struggle ensues to find and move to a place in which the disturbance can be corrected. This way of holding calm makes calm almost inaccessible.

Being calm is essential to all that we do. Having a calm mind doesn’t depend on appearance. It doesn’t depend on situations. It is more powerful to see calmness not as something that we have to force into being, but as something already existing, or simply as a quality of being in which we can abide, something to be fallen into or uncovered. It can be held as a base or context to those qualities that we call non-calm, or different from calm. Thus we can see attaining calmness not as something that we do, like jumping from one item to another, but as a shift into the sea in which all things float.

It is our tendency toward constant reactivity that reveals to us the power of stillness.

[…]

By holding calm in the way suggested here, we can simply not “do” those things. … instead of trying to make those things disappear, we can simply let them be, not feed them energy and attention, and let them float in the base that we now call being calm. It is from this principle that we can be responsive and clear.

• Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, pp. 5-6.

streaming ideas

On Saturday morning, I was standing and looking out the window when suddenly a flock of Canadian geese went flying by, honking loudly to each other. You could hear their wings flap and practically see their effort to stay afloat and in line. Unthinking conformism or wise family harmony?

The snowy garden looked kind of sad. Yet if you look closely, there is something interesting. Look at the path Honey Girl made in the snow. She has clearly been making rounds around the yard, which is normal. But her rounds include a special trip to the statue of a cat, our long-lost ginger cat Alvin (ca. 1982–1998), as if she were paying him homage or saying hello to a creature she never met. What instincts or memories kept her walking that way?

Remembering things you don’t really know is what Twyla Tharp calls “ancient memory.” She describes it as the sort of things that make you say to yourself: “’It feels right.’” As she explains, “And part of the reason it feels right is that the move has been reinforced in us over centuries of practice. Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.”*

When I am precisely focused, about 10-12 minutes into the routine of Master Peng, the T’ai chi form begins to elicit a similar sensation of “ancient moving” and well-being in me. I start getting warm, and I feel as if I’ve enjoyed reaching, standing or stretching like that before. It seems I forgot that good feeling existed and I’m rediscovering it again, every day! Like you’re a little kid again and just loving spinning around and holding still, deliberately stunning yourself and regaining equilibrium, and landing in control.

Speaking of focus, did you know you can use your moving body (via yoga or T’ai chi) to conquer bad habits such as procrastination? As Peter Ralston says, “There is a state of being that shows itself as power, has free and uninhibited life force, with no thought or refuge being taken in the intellect, which honestly and simply abandons itself to the task at hand.”**

 

Yet after those soaring metaphysical queries, last night I was captivated by more mundane matters in the physical world. The whole world seemed silent and muted, draped in a massive fog formation. Here on Riverside Drive, it looked like clouds were floating right outside the house.

After a long walk in a cold, clammy forest with Honey Girl, I asked Rich over dinner, “Which do you like better, ‘fog’ or ‘brouillard’?” “Fog,” he said, explaining “its origin in og always appealed to me. It brings to mind ogle, optical, optometrist, and other ideas linked to vision…”*** to which I unhelpfully added, “And ogre.”

“But just think of the great word débrouillard,” I continued, “which sounds like you are moving aside the fog….”

“What about defog?” he grunted.

“Yes but that is just for car windshields, it doesn’t have the metaphorical wealth of débrouillard,” I trilled, warming to the subject. “What a great language French is, where there’s a verb like se débrouiller (know how to cope or figure things out), or an adjective like débrouillard (clever or shrewd), all linked to the notion of fog.”

“Ahem, se débrouiller is not linked to brouillard,” he spoke professorially,  preparing for a long lecture on the topic, being that he is often as learned about the French language as I am with my PhD, etc. etc. etc.

But at this point I didn’t even hear what he was saying anymore. Not because we’ve been married 31 years (well, maybe a little) but also because my own mind had realized the error of my ways. My own mind was scolding me, “And débrouillard is furthermore merely based on the suffix –ard, as in franchouillard, babillard, to signify popular or endearing, etc. etc.” until I bored myself into a pensive silence.

Bottom line: I still think brouillard is a better word-concept-sound than fog, but I cannot explain exactly why. It just is that way, for me.

***

*Tharp, Creative Habit, 70.  **Ralston, Principles, 79. *** This etymology is inaccurate, I later learned. Oh, how wily he is, to try to keep fooling me with his authoritative-sounding and off-the-cuff fictions, after all these years!  HA!

 

Ichiro or the yellow cat: who would you rather be?

This semester we played some games in my classes to raise students’ awareness of their environment and how they react to it. This is one.

Teacher pulls out of a bag a bobblehead and a yellow Japanese cat figure, puts them on a table, and asks: “Who would you rather be, the best hitter of the era, Ichiro Suzuki, who led the Seattle Mariners in 2001? Or this yellow cat piggy bank?”

Students laugh. “Ichiro of course.”

The teacher: “Are you sure? Watch his head. Being an unaware human, he is a victim of the Mind. Thus when something bad comes along [Give the head a hard tap], he’s out of control.  [The head continues to bounce randomly, for a good three minutes or so.]. It is the cat we should emulate. The cat, with a low center of gravity, cannot be tipped over.”

This relates to all manner of actions. As Peter Ralston writes,

When our feeling-attention is put in the center region, the intellect does not dominate our actions and perceptions.  … Centering calms the mind, making it clear and powerful, unquestioning and unknowing, thus allowing access to a domain of spontaneous appropriate actions.

Begin by getting in touch with the center region on a physical level. Concentrate on the feet, when you stand in line or do a standing meditation. Notice how the feet constantly relate and readjust in relationship to the earth. It is the transference of weight from one foot to another that allows most of our actions and power. Adjust the waist and legs to accomodate a force. Keep you tailbone tucked under. Support your back and head from below. Remember that gravity is not just a mere “fact of the planet.” It is a profound force and possibility.

Consider this deeply.*

***

*Peter Ralstson, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, 10-15.

I will consider it deeply as I head out now for a walk with Honey Girl!

embrace the inevitable

Gearing up for another week of work or school in mid-November can be a challenge. May these words of wisdom by Peter Ralston be a guide; they are from a chapter on “the Principle of Inclusion” (more on that to come on this blog!):

There is a state of being that shows itself as power, has free and uninhibited life force, with no thought or refuge being taken in the intellect, which honestly and simply abandons itself to the task at hand.*

Whether your task is reading, preparing a speech, or just waiting for a ticklish raindrop to fall off a leaf (or your nose!), it helps to think of yourself as living-in-process. Whatever you fail to embrace now, you will simply have to confront later.

Roll with the punches, let go of ego and angry recriminations, allow the energy to flow uninterrupted.

An example:  Just now, I said to someone, “It is nice and cool outside today.” The person replied, “No, it’s actually warm. Much warmer than yesterday.” Since my comment was inspired by a desire to connect with the person, untroubled by ideas of being “right” or “winning,” I merely smiled at the contrarian. Remembering Ralston’s wise counsel, I replied, “Yes, it’s nice and warm today.”

* Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, 1st ed. 1989 (Berkeley, CA: Blue Snake Books, 1999), 79.