Taiji Day 330: If I had known…

If I had known that I’d be finishing my first year of daily tai chi sometime in the middle of late winter, I think I might not have begun.  But if I had started in such a way that I finished in June, I’m not sure I’d have begun, either.  Seasons are funny, you know?  Before I consciously studied the eight-spoked Wheel of the year, I’m not sure that I could say whether my life got inexplicably busy at the end of January and beginning of February, or not.  Now that I’m … hmmm… enmeshed in thinking about this time of year — Groundhog Day/Candlemas/Imbolc — as this time of year, it seems like my life goes into overdrive around here every year.  This has been a week for finishing projects and starting new ones, and a week for tremendous change.  Maybe I shouldn’t call it Imbolc or Candlemas, so much as Quickening.

It was finishing such a project at about quarter to 11 last night, after a week of such nights, that sent me to bed.  WHen the alarm went off this morning, I wasn’t even entirely aware of it.  Brief bathroom visit, then tai chi. Except…

Except I wasn’t even awake yet.  Sometime around the middle of Five Golden Coins, I realized I was standing in my office at home.  There, I was moving through the motions of qi gong… and that I had done the previous motions necessary to get to the point that I was, in the form.  But suddenly I was awake, and no longer asleep.  I was in a different mental state — no longer droopy-eyed, no longer half-snoring, but awake and alert and in my strength.

This may be difficult to explain to someone who wasn’t there (and given that I’m the only one here, I’m not even sure I’m explaining it well to myself, or that I’ll understand it six months from now).  But there’s a qualitative difference between doing tai chi with a sleep-fogged brain, and doing tai chi in an aware state.  This morning, I started my routine on autopilot — but I didn’t stay on autopilot.  Something came awake in me, and helped me to finish the work in a heightened state of awareness.

It was the starting in a a state of sleep that seemed more alarming, actually.  How many days have I slept through, even as I was walking and working?

Taiji Day 96: Right hip

This morning it’s my right hip, not my left, that hurts.  This apparently means that my efforts to unstick my left hip using taiji are working, and that some of the pressure which used to be carried by the muscles on left side has eased… so the right hip is compensating, and consequently getting sore.  Amazing.

If I were going to a doctor about this, the doc would have looked at my right hip, prescribed muscle relaxants and pain medications, and maybe have recommended a little more exercise.  My way, this taiji way, the muscles are not relaxing at all — they’re getting stronger, and doing what they’re supposed to do.

Incidentally, the mala project?  Walk for 20 minutes to improve brain functionality? I did it twice yesterday — once in the middle of the school day when I was feeling loogy and slow, and again between dinner and sitting down to grading schoolwork (the American mythology of the future is going to have the story of the teacher confined to Hell, engaged in the perpetual grading of student papers, like Sisyphus rolling a stone up the hill).   I felt that the work of grading went much more quickly after the second walk, and it helped speed the process of digestion a little bit.

Which reveals a particular truth — I usually get a good clip of writing done in the morning, right after taiji (exercise).  Then at lunchtime, I did another clip of writing work after a walk (exercise).  Then another good clip of work after an evening walk to the river and back (exercise).  Brain function improves with exercise, and it changes one’s energy. What is that energy, anyway, that we’re talking about when we talk about chi or qi? Good question. I’m not sure anyone knows the answer.

Clio and the possum

CLio and the possum
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Clio suprised a possum in the bushes outside school yesterday, before the SuperBowl. Here she is with her quarry, which she did not get — though my arm is pretty sore today as a result.

She’s doing ok, for those who asked, but her pee problem is not any better. It’s always tricky, and I don’t really feel welcome at many people’s houses any more. There’s always an issue of “is she welcome? Is she really welcome?” and I’m rather indecisive about what to do about that.

Driving and Walking

As mentioned, she had some difficulty with her car yesterday. It appears that her radiator was low on antifreeze, so the nice folks at the garage up the street put in some new goop, and they’re holding it overnight to double-check that there’s no leak anywhere. They also changed the oil, and reset the diagnostic computer, to the tune of about a hundred bucks.

I took the car up about noon, as they have a small parking lot and couldn’t take it before then. I could have picked it up tonight, but they highly recommended letting it sit to confirm that it isn’t a radiator leak. The pressure test didn’t reveal anything, but they had to put in a gallon of antifreeze and they thought that might indicate a problem somewhere.

After I dropped off the car, I walked home.

Trekking and Sweating

Today I took Clio on a long walk. I think we left the house about 5:30, and we just got back now about 7:30. I walked around the campus of the neighboring school, around their maintenance facility, and then down the dirt road behind campus over to the backcountry route. Then I took the Red Trail back past the hockey rink. Along the way I met Sandy, with her two dogs Ella and Dell. She teaches anthropology and her husband teaches classics. She seems pretty cool at first glance; maybe I want to get to know them.

Last night I went to the co-ed sweat lodge down in Ashford, at ‘s roommate’s place.

Morning Walk

I’ve been getting up at 5am for a while now to walk the dog, and that’s been good both for me and for her. However, all our usual walks were getting stale, so for the last two days I’ve been walking on the King’s Highway. This dirt road runs not far from campus (it borders it for about 80 feet), and it’s woodsy on both sides. Once up and and back on that, and then down the campus road to our buildings & grounds facility, and then up and around the pond, and then around the campus of the neighboring school, is about an hour from start to finish. It’s a nice walk.

Today, Clio and I startled a doe from her covert. She bounded across what will eventually be the new soccer field, and into the woods between the two schools. She was magnificent in motion, these efficient bounds that took her across the field and under the trees. It made me think about Native peoples here in the Americas before Europeans came, and what it must have been like to be in that time and in that world, when animals were omens as well as meat and tools on the hoof.

I read the other day that a couple of big oil company executives admit that we are past peak oil in most of the world, and probably in OPEC countries as well (who, for political reasons, massage and inflate the value of their proven reserves). These guys expect that we will be short 30-37 mb/d (that’s million barrels per day) in terms of world supply within about 5 years, compared with demand. Right now, the world needs around 100 mb/d. Meanwhile, the oil execs figure that a) half the oil in the ground is gone, and b) world production will never top 100 mb/d. Ever. That’s expected to increase around 140 mb/d over the next decade. That shortfall is going to pinch. And hurt, a lot.

Palermo Day 2

Location: Palermo
Weather: drizzle, shading into storm as the day progresses

Woke at 7am after restless night. Walked down to breakfast after showering and shaving before heading out. Breakfast was canteloupe, strawberries, kiwi, baby strawberries the size of blueberries, granola yogurt, and one Sicilian style cannoli. The Sicilians invented them, and this is the best cannoli I’ve ever had. Also fresh orange juice and coffee.

We packed up after Breakfast. We met our cab driver and guide, Antonio Gallano, who took us to the Mercado Vucchiria, the oldest market in the city. The street is no wider than me with my hands spread wide, and it is lined with tiny stalls selling fruit, cheese, and spices. Saffron packed into plastic bags, bunches of rosemary or basil, packages of tarragon… the smells were heavenly. The central square is filled with fish stalls, all selling fresh fish. A man gave me a taste of freshly boiled octopus caught that morning. Delicious!

Larger shops off the street sell coffee from huge glass jars and tiny espresso makers; bread; pastries; and paper goods like towels and toilet paper. No shop sells more than a few things. You might have to do business with a dozen merchants to do what you would do in a supermarket in the US. The smells are simply heavenly.

We got two cups of espresso from one shop, and a biscotti and a jam cookie from another shop, and had a wonderful second breakfast. Neither the shop owner nor his assistant spoke English, and their Italian was so accented with the Sicilian dialect that we had difficulty understanding what was said. Mostly we communicated with sign language and smiles.

Several restaurants overhang the Vucchiria’s main square and side streets. There’s no space for them on the ground floor, but the balconies reduce the sunlight to a narrow opening above the central fountain. One of them was the Shanhai, a restaurant which has been around in one form or another since the days when Sicily traded with China. Peter Robb mentions it in his book. At night, the main square of the Vucciria is supposedly the hangout of the transvestite and transgender hookers. We didn’t stay to find out. Besides, we’re going to Agrigento on the south coast later today, and it’s a three-hour drive.

After the Market, we went into the baroque Chiesa di San Domenico, and walked up and down the main commercial street by the Mercado. There were some men’s fashion stores, and some watch and jewelry places. Most of it was women’s clothing, which seemed (by American standards) very youthful and more than slightly on the trashy side — tight jeans, tank tops in vibrant colors, frilly blouses. The women everywhere clearly wore this clothing — I noted them everywhere — but there was a strict “don’t talk to strangers” policy everywhere. Women would talk to women, apparently, or to a man while in the company of another woman, but a man and a woman alone, except with a baby in tow, was a fairly rare sight today. Crowds of kids— two or three girls and five or six guys — seemed to be ok. One girl and many guys, not so good. Guy and girl alone, without wedding bands… no. Didn’t seem to happen.

Antonio was dismissive of our interest in the Vucchiria. He thought we should go to the Mercado Capo, near one of Palermo’s old gates. He drove us by it to see, and it seemed much more lively. with a wider street and more market stalls.

Ended our day at the Teatro Massimo, the Opera House in downtown Palermo. It’s huge, built out of stone from the same quarry that built some of the temples at Segesta in the V century BC. They were showing Turandot, and dad wanted to get tickets for us. Alas, sold out. The tickets are only five Euros, though, about $7.00 US. A ticket to Turandot in New York, for a nosebleed seat, must run $75-100. It turned out that our cabbie Antonio had been to see Turandot. It was not his favorite opera, but he did a passable rendition of several songs as he weaved in and out of noontime traffic. Dad loved it. Watching several close calls, I wasn’t so sure that opera and heavy machinery mixed.

Back to the hotel to fetch our luggage, and then another hair-raising trip through traffic to the airport. We’re going to depart here and drive through Palermo to the town of Villabate, where we’ll pick up the Autostrade to Agrigento, on the south coast.