this particular wagon wheel started rolling maybe when the earthquake hit. or the few days before the trip to Cebu. time is fuzzy about the whole thing.
but i am trying right now to hold onto the handle of a fan. a snappy, yellow fan. that pops when it opens if you do it right, and makes a *snikt sound when it closes, when you do it right. this is the second day i’ve come to this tai chi group with Peter. we are searching for an association of sorts, to certify the effort that i’m making.
i keep reminding everyone that my whole purpose is to be healthy – brain and body, right? but the world does not like such a simple thing. now, later, after i still can’t figure out how to hold the fan right, because my fingers aren’t working, my hands aren’t working, my brain isn’t working, my legs are in catastrophic muscle failure.
i am aware, second by second, that this is all the result of my concurrent decisions. i went to Cebu, walking at 4 in the morning to catch a limo to the philippines to be escorted by strangers in vans, minus the hour i got in the most brutal of heat to find people living on garbage dumps or be charged the five pesos down an alley to use an unmarked ‘comfort room’ and get grumbled at as a gringo in a bumblebee outfit. that memory is still fresh. no sleep for the wicked those three nights and shanghaied in the airport until i bought another trip to hong kong three months away on a dusty, indistinct roadway.
right after, the early mornings with cindy learning vedic meditation – life-changing! and i have done my two sessions per day since then as they gradually get weirder and weirder. today was the first day i missed the AM one because 8-10am a place an hour away means waking up and not being ready to do much other than get on a train and then walk. but to find out that 8-10 means actually 8-4pm, because you can’t just learn tai chi, you have to be involved in the socio-political landscape, and i’m watching shrimps get boiled alive in a hot pot in front of me across from a master who is signing me up for a competition july 14th and I’m buying beautiful clothes for it, even though i might be the only foreigner so i’m automatically the champion, or i’m one of two (a Japanese guy? someone named michael?) so silver – or bronze.?
the instructions are different in the competitive form. Peter’s way of teaching allowed me some grace to make small movements. the new teacher is down loooooow in her stance and all my pivot points are falling apart because i don’t have any brain sugar plus i just had that personal trainer session and before that i was on the longest bike rides of my life, flying through rice fields back and forth to a beach with black sand and also an animal shelter with dozens of animal souls, a handful of them with three legs, floating and barking like flocks of seagulls, but on the floor.
there is no recovery day from any of this, so the new master says, once i am down in this position, the next thing to do is drop at the hip crease. this is not possible. there is nowhere to drop to. there is only imminent collapse. my legs aren’t holding me up anymore, it is by willpower borrowed from the future that i’m not laying on the outdoor beaded cement floor. except a minute ago i was lying on a marble bench, just out of the sun, but tiny ants had crawled on me and bit the back of my left hand, and red patchy allergic marks are running down my veins now.
i have signed up for some volunteer opportunities – maybe recovery will come there. on the 16-17, maybe beach days are on the horizon. 17-18th, pan asian alumni conference. The 19th I head to Keelung for three weeks. I haven’t pinned down where I’m staying after the 13th yet. I’m on a couch right now. super comfortable!
there was a pizza date last night and on the menu – ‘teen spirit’. jack kerouac was talking a narrative over something playing on the juke box.
an unread message – i’ve been trying to contact a monastery down south, still here in taiwan, to find some peace for a few weeks. people say you don’t want to speak or be spoken to and i say god yes, let me recharge. my friend in korea helping me out, suggesting places to land, good advice, good advice.
on an escalator, one step down, looking straight forward and up, and a hand comes to tilt my chin away, until this is not the case, and I get to keep looking.
i’d found a park nearby at the last place, out the compound and right left right left turn and tuck myself through the thin doorway, no one ever there, to practice. i have not found a park yet in these two days, i have been traveling, my footfalls to the train station or to the beer and ice cream and noodle store. i have to schedule a pajama party too, and soon, before the ice cream melts.
i’m going to the bridge tonight. it’s a different route, same destination, different origin story. i can point to places on my face like an overlaid map. a spot on my neck and then at the corner of my mouth. this is a like a treasure map in a sealed bottle in the ocean.
20 minutes is up
